


Look At You, Strawberry Blonde

by Dredfulhapiness



Category: Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, An Appropriate Amount of Angst, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26164408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: Gwen hates MJ from the first moment she sees her: hates the uptick of her lips, hates the necklace that dips beneath the collar of her shirt, hates the way she presses into Harry’s side as they walk.She first sees her in the doorway of a diner, neon lights painting her face with red and blue gouache. Highlights across the bridge of her nose. She’s never spoken to her, but the sight of her makes Gwen’s stomach grow an ulcer.(Her hair makes Gwen think, Sunset. Her eyes make her think, Earth. She’s the most beautiful person she’s ever seen. Utterly elemental.)Or, Gwen falls in love with her best friend.
Relationships: Gwen Stacy/Mary Jane Watson
Comments: 53
Kudos: 119





	Look At You, Strawberry Blonde

Gwen hates MJ from the first moment she sees her: hates the uptick of her lips, hates the necklace that dips beneath the collar of her shirt, hates the way she presses into Harry’s side as they walk.

She first sees her in the doorway of a diner, neon lights painting her face with red and blue gouache. Highlights across the bridge of her nose. She’s never spoken to her, but the sight of her makes Gwen’s stomach grow an ulcer.

(Her hair makes Gwen think, _Sunset._ Her eyes make her think, _Earth._ She’s the most beautiful person she’s ever seen. Utterly elemental.)

She waves when she sees Peter, face breaking from neutral joy to a full grin.

Gwen hates that, too.

“Pete!” Harry calls, and he overrides whatever spell has come over her. “Gwen, hey!”

“Sorry we’re late,” Harry says, sliding into the booth across from Gwen and Peter.

“Rehearsal ran late and Harry didn’t want me walking over alone,” MJ explains.

Gwen glances out the window. It had gotten dark while she and Peter waited. She hadn’t noticed.

“These fries for the table?” Harry asks, already grabbing a handful.

“Fortunately, yes.” If Harry catches Gwen’s sarcasm, he doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Gwen, right?” MJ asks. She flips her hair over her shoulders as she speaks. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Her eyes flick to Peter, a chaffing glance that makes Gwen’s blood curdle.

Peter looks away, down, at the empty plate in front of him.

“From Harry, too,” MJ says, and Peter’s shoulders relaxed. “Apparently you’re a great lab partner.”

“She keeps Peter from goofing off,” Harry says. He grabs another handful of fries. “Also, she’s wicked smart.”

Gwen raises an eyebrow. _“Wicked?”_ She and MJ ask together. Gwen reels back like she’s been struck.

MJ doubles down, “Harry, when was the last time you heard someone say _wicked?”_

“At the skate park the other day. It was radical.”

“Rich people these days are so out of touch with the general population,” Peter says, shaking his head. “It’s sad.”

“What I was _saying,”_ Harry raises his voice to avoid being interrupted, “is that Gwen is the smartest person at this table.”

Gwen takes a sip of her milkshake and shakes her head. She can feel her cheeks heat up.

“That’s not true at all. We just have totally different concentrations and we happened to be in a biolo—“

“Peter?” Harry points at him with a fry.

“You’re smart, Gwen.”

“At the very least, you work harder.”

(That might be true. Smart as they both were, the number of times she’d turned around to find one of them holding a pair of beakers against their chest like boobs was… Well, it was a lot.

There was no denying their intelligence. The casual way Harry corrects one of their mistakes, the way Peter pulls formula solutions out of thin air. As torturous as keeping them on track could be, they were an unstoppable force, especially together.

They worked in a silent harmony, pens passed without asking and numbers crossed out from across the table. It was impossible not to fall into the rhythm of their dance. Gwen found comfort in the way Harry would look over her shoulder at the notes on her laptop, or how Peter would put his hand on her forearm when he passed behind her with a full beaker.

It is very, very easy to fall in love with the purposeful, knowing way they co-existed.)

“Whatcha rehearsing, again?” Peter asks MJ, and Gwen is grateful for the subject change.

“Our Town,” she says with a flippant flick of her hand that sears itself into the back of Gwen’s eyelids. “I mean, it’s fine, but we did it in high school—”

“And you killed it,” Peter reminds her. He points at her with a fry.

“Sure, whatever, but it’s hardly the most exciting play. We were _supposed_ to do _The Humans,_ but they were pushing for a—”

“Slightly larger cast,” Harry and Peter say with her, deadpan.

“Did I mention that before?”

“A couple dozen times,” Harry says. His arm is draped over the back of the booth, fingertips grazing MJ’s shoulder.

“Well I didn’t know,” Gwen says, suddenly overwhelmed with the need to affirm her presence. She realizes how loud she is when their heads whip around to look at her.

“Uh.” Peter stammers, and Gwen’s face feels warm. “R-right. Sorry, I guess you wouldn’t…”

He clears his throat to buy himself time to backtrack.

“The theater department is afraid to take risks,” MJ explains, effortlessly picking up where Peter left off.

“Well, you _could_ just not audition,” Harry points out, and MJ’s expression implies she’s been shot. Her face goes pale, betrayal paints the corners of her cheeks the open sign can’t quite reach. She turns her head, and he holds up the hand that isn’t on her shoulder in surrender. “What I _meant_ to say is that any show you’re in is gonna be great, MJ.”

Gwen takes a sip of her drink to hide the downturn of her lips.

She can count the points of contact between Harry and MJ, can visualize where their knees are knocking under the cover of the table. His hand on her shoulder. Her elbow against his ribs.

Gwen swallows.

“You knew each other in high school?” She asks instead of letting herself think more.

“Peter tutored me in chemistry,” MJ says with a smirk. Peter rolls his eyes.

Gwen and Harry exchange a _we’re not a part of this joke, are we?_ look.

“We were next door neighbors,” Peter corrects.

“Childhood friends, built-in homecoming date.”

“How romantic,” Gwen says, and her mouth is dry.

“He wishes.” MJ blows him a kiss, and Harry shoulders her gently. Peter rewards her with a dead stare. She brings her attention back to Gwen. “But how did you two meet?”

_I thought you’ve ‘heard so much about me.’_ Gwen bites her tongue and tells herself to sit through dinner civilly. It’s one meal.

“Bio 101,” Gwen says. “And then we just… kept ending up in the same classes.”

“She takes great notes,” Peter says. “Very thorough.”

“Because he missed most classes, I presume?” The way she’s looking at Gwen makes her stomach boil.

Gwen’s brain mocks, _Presume,_ with an uppity British accent.

She feels a gnawing need to defend him, but she really can’t. Peter was out of class more than he was in it.

(Another point in his favor intelligence-wise, teaching himself only from the scraps of notes Gwen takes in class. She’s seen him in the lab, and she’s seen some of his exam scores, none of which could be the result of a lazy student.)

“Hey, if participation isn’t required, the professor is just _begging_ me to skip,” Peter says.

“Then what are you paying for?”

He winks at Gwen, very _watch this._ “A very fancy wall decoration.” Gwen follows his gaze to the wrinkle forming in MJ’s forehead.

“You should take your education seriously, Pete. You’re going into engineering, and for _everyone’s_ safety you should—“

Gwen gets distracted watching MJ’s hands move as she talks. She points a lot, emphasizes it with brightly colored nails. They’re green. Sparkly. She makes points by dragging the pad of her finger along the grout on the table and it takes Peter accidentally bumping her when he reached for a fry to tear Gwen’s attention away.

She feels lightheaded.

—

The problem is that MJ isn’t vapid. She isn’t so obsessed with her looks that Gwen could explain her distaste away with some sexist explanation of MJ’s lack of personality.

She’s _nice._ She’s pretty. She laughs like a movie star, jawline only growing more powerful when she tosses her head back. She’s smart.

It’s only been twenty minutes, but somehow Gwen feels like her life is ruined.

She struggles to put a title to her loathing as she watches MJ argue with Peter about the true tragedy in Romeo and Juliet.

Gwen thinks, _Is theater the only thing she talks about?_

Gwen thinks, _She’s making some good points._

Gwen thinks, _I never liked Romeo and Juliet very much, anyway._

She’s always found it tedious in all the wrong ways: a highlight of her least favorite aspects of romance. It’s about the idea of love, fumbly middle school note passing gone wrong. It’s the pinnacle of miscommunication in media made less accessible with flowery language and extended metaphors.

Love at first sight— love without the basis of a real relationship— she’s sure it’s a myth. People tricking themselves.

As much as she considers herself a romantic, she’s sure you can only find love if you’re looking for it. It’s hidden under the rocks of how someone writes your favorite word, in the tree holes of their coffee order. You teach yourself how to love someone. You do it willingly.

Gwen thinks, _Does it even matter?_

It boils down to this: they’re sitting in a diner and Gwen is thinking harder about Romeo and Juliet than she ever did in high school English class and she feels like a volcano is boiling under her feet.

Peter thinks the tragedy is that fate is bullshit. People are never _meant_ to die, they just do. Parents, cousins, nurses, friars, they don’t listen and people get hurt. Star-crossed lovers aren’t by accident, they’re made by a society that disregards the autonomy of kids.

“There’s not always a chance to save someone, but there are so many people who could have tried. Everyone in their lives failed them.”

MJ thinks the tragedy is destiny, strung up like Christmas lights. All the people Romeo and Juliet were never going to be, all the roses that could never be tulips. Dramatic irony is a death sentence. No matter the lifetime, no matter the circumstances, Romeo and Juliet were never meant to be together.

“You don’t actually believe in all that, do you?” Harry asks when she’s finished. “All that destiny stuff.”

She shrugs and takes a sip of her milkshake. “If fate is real, I think it can be deferred.”

Gwen thinks about how stars are always dying. By the time you read the message written in them, it’s already been erased. It’s in the process of being re-written.

Instead of saying any of that, she takes a long bite of her burger and chews until she’s just grinding her teeth together.

—

Peter walks her home with a hand on the small of her back and Gwen doesn’t hate it. New York isn’t dark, it never is. New York isn’t still, it never is. They pass couples and friend groups and tipsy tourists who keep tripping over their feet trying to look up, up, up at where buildings meet the blue-grey sky.

She wants to tell them that The City doesn’t care about them. The core of Manhattan is just street layered on top of street; it’s neither cold nor kind and it will never fight for them.

She thinks they’ll learn that eventually, when heartbreak is punctuated with sticky subway seats and angry bystanders. Or, maybe, they’ll never get the chance. They’ll pack up and leave the smog behind them without knowing the beauty of nearly getting hit by a car after a long day at work.

Either way, she supposes it isn’t her place to warn them.

They stop under a streetlight outside of Gwen’s apartment building, and she considers inviting Peter in. She thinks that could be nice, the two of them in her kitchen speaking in soft tones so they don’t wake her roommate, faces washed out by refrigerator light.

She could be happy like that, with Peter’s hand on her wrist and a glass shared between them.

Gwen watches his face morph into the shape of a question and she knows he wouldn’t agree with her assessment of The City. He would defend it until his teeth were filed down to stubs. She pictures him punctuating points about Tybalt with dramatic hand gestures. She sees Harry’s face when MJ turns to him to back her up, and her stomach knots again.

She says goodbye and she doesn’t kiss him. He stands outside and makes sure she gets in okay and they never call their night a date.

—

Gwen mentally proclaims her hatred and suddenly MJ is everywhere. She sees her in the library, across the dining hall, crossing the street with her phone pressed tight to her ear.

She wonders how many times she’s seen MJ without realizing it. How many times they’ve reached for the same drink in Starbucks, or checked books out of the library right before the other person.

(How many forms their names are written side-by-side in.)

It’s nearly obsessive, but she can’t escape her.

Gwen didn’t kiss Peter goodnight, so they only hang out in groups. Where there was Peter, there was Harry, and where there was Harry…

Simply put, Gwen gets used to feeling like she’s housing an anvil in her chest.

She reminds herself, often, of a hungry child; she finds herself biting back more unhelpful comments than she voices kind ones. It’s unlike her. She’s unusually scathing, feels like she’s defending her place at the metaphorical table when no one questioned her authority in the first place.

MJ offers to teach her how to throw a strike and she nearly breaks her arm sending the bowling ball down the alley. She doesn’t even manage a spare, ends with a four and ten split and rolls it straight down the middle on her second turn. She bounces her knee while she waits for her next turn, reading bowling tips on her phone under the counter, thinking, _Next time. I’ll get it next time._

They study, and Gwen blurts out the answers before anyone else can. She says it with a ferocity, a bite that brings attention to her. She doesn’t care. MJ looks at her over the top of her book, and Peter offers a thumbs up.

The next time Peter asks a question, MJ is the one to jump on it. She’s not even in the class, she’s supposed to be reading some book in the great American canon, but she comes out with, “Beer-Lambert Law” just as Gwen is opening her mouth.

“Damn,” Harry says, _“Alright.”_

They high five, and Gwen’s blood curdles.

She wants to outdo her.

Gwen brings her own inlines when they go skating; she wipes out trying to skate backwards, and MJ laughs so hard she has to exit the rink so she can sit down.

She speed-reads the post-modern mess MJ is reading for class and drafts a mental thesis about how mental illness influenced the era. When she mentions it, MJ’s face lights up and Gwen feels the unrest in her stomach again. Maggots.

MJ looks at Gwen like she’s holding up the sky, like she hung the moon, like she’s the match that lit the sun. They start discussing and it fades into stoicity.

Gwen wants to see it again.

She wants to impress MJ.

—

Eventually, she recognizes the talons in her abdomen as jealousy. It’s bleeding out onto her bedsheets, flooding her room.

She thinks about MJ on Harry’s lap, arm around his neck for support, leaning down to whisper something in his ear, and the talons twist.

She thinks about him pressing a kiss to the corner of MJ’s lips and it guts her.

She stares at the shadows waltzing across her ceiling and doesn’t sleep.

—

“Gwen! Hey!”

In the bold light of day, Harry looks different than Gwen remembers when she spends her nights lamenting. Sharper. A real human face without any blurring.

He matches his step with her and shrugs his shoulders against the weight of his backpack.

“Where ya headed?” He asks.

“Chemistry two.”

“Is that in the—”

“Osborn building? Yep.”

Harry runs a hand down his face. “I wanted him to wait for the rename until _after_ I graduated, but…”

“You could change your last name for a few years,” Gwen suggests. “Go into the Empire U witness protection program.”

“Just wear sunglasses everywhere.” Harry laughs. “Hood up.”

“Like Justin Bieber dodging the paparazzi.”

He chuckles at that, too.

“Oh, speaking of paparazzi!” He turns on his heel, walks backwards just in front of Gwen. “Me, Peter, and MJ were gonna have dinner with one of Peter’s friends from the Bugle. You should come!”

“Peter has friends from the Bugle?”

He rubs the back of his neck. “Just the one. Friday night?”

“Uh. You know, I’m not sure. I’ve got an exam on Monday, and… What?”

He’s _pouting_ at her, somehow channeling Peter’s wounded puppy face.

“Nothing— we were just really hoping you’d be able to make it.”

“We?”

“Well, yeah. MJ’s been saying she misses you coming out with us.”

Gwen feels like she’s been hit by a ton of bricks.

“Oh,” She says. “You know, I’ve just been busy with work and school, and…”

_It shouldn’t be such a surprise,_ she thinks, _in hindsight._ Her loathing (unadulterated loathing) had never seemed to be anything more than one-sided. Even still, it stops her in her tracks.

(She realizes too late she’s made a reference to a musical she only listened to out of spite. After a horrified, “you don’t know _Wicked?”_ she’d spent a night watching videos entitled _Wicked Themed Slime Tutorials_ until she had a full grasp on the plot.

She didn’t like it.

Three of the songs had made it onto her On Repeat playlist.)

She feels it again, though, the aggressive abdominal knot of knowing they spend time together. Alone, talking and laughing and kissing. Together, together.

“What are the plans?” She manages with a wavering smile.

While Harry talks, Gwen watches his mouth move and she looks deep within herself for the spark that keeps her up at night. She tries to imagine a hand on his cheek, or pushing back the curl that hangs a little too low on his face.

She feels nothing: no voice compelling her to lean in, no urge to idly trace the sharp lines of his jaw.

She looks at him and she feels the same as she did under the streetlamp with Peter.

She thinks, _I could make it work._

She thinks, _He’s already dating MJ._

She feels the tug again.

—

Gwen likes Betty immediately.

She has the air of someone who puts-up-with-but-doesn’t-actually-put-up-with a lot of bullshit. A gentle smile and hard eyes. She doesn’t even flinch when Harry drops a glass in the kitchen.

(Hardened. Stone.)

“You work for Jameson, don’t you,” Gwen asks after they’ve been introduced.

“I’m his secretary,” Betty says, and Gwen didn’t know it was possible for someone to sound so cheerfully exhausted. “That obvious?”

Gwen cringes. “Yikes,” she offers.

Everything she knows about Jameson, she knows from Peter. And also the bits of his podcast she was unfortunate enough to have heard.

(According to him, vigilantes will be the downfall of the justice system. Spider-Man is setting a bad example, he’s encouraging dangerous parkour, all of his saves are staged. Normal conspiracy theory stuff. She doesn’t know his for sure, but he probably thinks the world is flat, too.)

According to Peter, he was well-enough-versed in technology to record a podcast, but he still required hardcopies of photos, and that Rite Aid printing fee is a _bitch._

“What crimes have you committed against the universe to end up with a job like that?”

Betty laughed. “Be an intern in the wrong place at the wrong time. His secretary quit and I was the only one around so he just…”

“Promoted you?”

“That’s one way to put it. But someone’s gotta look out for Peter when he’s running late, so…” She takes a sip of her sparkling water. “Plus, itpays well enough.”

MJ is late. Gwen doesn’t even realize she’s missing (that she was missing her) until she shoulders into the door halfway through dinner with a box under her arm.

(It’s not a relief. Suddenly all of her muscles are tight. She’s fighting off a headache.)

“Sorry!” She says. “Sorry. The train got stuck for, like, an hour. I think it hit an animal or something. I brought the chips, though.”

Gwen stares at what she’s holding, her wristlet, the box.

“Chips?” She asks.

Betty blinks. “They didn’t tell you?”

Harry pokes Gwen’s cheek, right on her dimple, says, “I hope you’ve been perfecting your poker face.”

(He has no idea.)

—

Gwen keeps her eyes trained down at her hand.

“Harry, are we gonna flip a coin for who does dishes tonight? Or do you want to arm wrestle?” Peter slides three cards into the middle of the table as he speaks. “I’d rather not arm wrestle because you’ve been going to the gym and getting jacked, lately.”

MJ hands him three new cards.

“We can worry about that later. Two, please, MJ.”

“Or we could play Mario Kart. Or that— that sword fighting game in Wii Sports Resort.”

“Harry can wash, you can dry,” Betty suggests. “I’m not trading any.”

Peter shakes his head. “Our combined shoulders are too wide for the kitchen. I wasn’t kidding when I said Harry was getting yoked. Dude hulked out. I watched him put on a shirt the other day and then when he reached into his pocket he ripped it straight in half. He wasn’t even _trying_ to flex. Like, you should really go on one of those bodybuilding shows. You could win big.” 

Harry taps his cards against the table. “Pete… I’m begging you to stop talking. You are… You’re like ska, you make it impossible to focus on anything.”

MJ covers her mouth with her fan of cards. Just above the Bicycle logo, her eyes were positively sparkling.

“Maybe that’s all a part of my plan. Annoy all of you so I win. Make you forget that you didn’t want to fold.”

“You’re this annoying all the time,” Gwen says, “it’s definitely not on purpose.”

“Big talk coming from someone who’s folded every single round,” Harry says. “You ever take risks, Gwendy?”

“Only when they’re calculated. Like this one.” She throws three blue chips into the center. “You gonna match me?”

“Oooooo,” Peter commentates, “And just like that, the game’s begun.”

“I’ll match you,” MJ says, throwing her own chips onto the pile.

Betty shakes her head and folds silently. Peter copies her with a grimace.

“Fuck it, why not?” Harry throws his chips in and flips his cards over. “Three aces.”

Gwen beams and his face falls.

“Fuck—“ He says just as she announces, “Full house!”

Peter wolf-whistles. “Look at that. The milkman, the paper boy, _and_ evening TV.”

“DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle,” Betty corrects. “Three queens.”

MJ clears her throat. “Very impressive. May I, however, introduce you to Uncle Jesse, Uncle Joey, and Danny Tanner.” She turns her hand around. Three kings, and a pair of sevens.

“I’ll accept MJ’s win if we stop making Full House jokes,” Harry says.

“It’s a dry well,” Peter concedes.

(Gwen is _not_ angry. She feels like she did at the bowling alley. Emboldened. She says, “I’ll deal next,” and straightens out her chips.)

She somehow manages a win sandwiched between two glorious losses.

—

This time, when she hears MJ’s voice, she recognizes it.

“Gwen! Hey! What are you up to?”

Gwen is sitting at the bus stop, textbook open in her lap, coat slung over her shoulder. She looks at MJ, then at the plexiglass case she’s sitting in.

“Er… I guess, where are you going?” MJ corrects before Gwen has a chance to respond.

“Home,” Gwen says. “I just finished up my last class.”

MJ scrunches up her face. “Night classes? Euck.”

Gwen would argue with her, but she’s inclined to agree. Night classes meant a wasted four hours spent between classes. It wasn’t enough time for a shift at work, and it never felt long enough to go home, either.

“What about you?” She asks.

“I’m actually headed to a party.”

She’s dressed up, Gwen notices too late. A tight skirt and a blouse with a floral pattern. Her collar dips down low, Gwen follows the line of it without thinking. She snaps her gaze back up to MJ’s face.

“—the cast thought it would be fun, y’know?” She’s still talking. Gwen hadn’t even realized. “What do you think?”

“Sorry?” Gwen asks.

Amusement flits across MJ’s face. “I asked if you wanted to come.”

“To the party?”

“To the party.”

Gwen takes in her outfit again. “I’m not really…” she motions to herself. “I was in class all day.”

“Don’t even worry about it. It’s nothing formal.”

Gwen has homework. A lot of it. Enough that she agreed to meet up and work on it with Peter on Sunday.

She should say no.

She should say no because she’s only ever hung out with MJ when Peter and Harry were there. She should say no because the sight of MJ still makes her stomach lurch. She should say no because she’s been nothing but indifferent to MJ and the chances of this being some Prom-Queen-Carrie level trap were high. There’s a chance that agreeing would end up with her covered in pig’s blood.

(No there’s not. She knows that MJ is too nice for that.)

But then she thinks about bowling. About Beer-Lambert law. She thinks about how happy MJ looked, before, when Gwen impressed her.

She finds herself saying, “sure, why not?”

—

Gwen is trying very hard not to do the _you’re the only person I know at this party_ follow.

She is failing just as hard.

It isn’t that she’s a stranger to parties. She’s been to plenty.

But those are scheduled frat parties, weekly events where girls get in for free and guys pay five dollars and it’s too loud to even attempt to strike up a conversation. The same people show up for the most part, too. People she can recognize in a dimly lit room while her brain is just fuzzy enough to feel pleasant, but who she probably wouldn’t know if they sat beside her in her English class.

This party is different. It’s personal.

MJ greets everyone individually with a warm smile or a hand on their elbow, or both.

She tells Gwen all of their names, and they immediately escape her. They dance off into the night.

This party isn’t a dark basement with RGB light strips cradling the creases of the ceiling. It’s a warmly lit apartment that smells like buffalo chicken dip with a bunch of balloons that spell out _congratulations_. There’s a floor lamp.

“Hey, guys, this is my friend Gwen,” MJ introduces, as if she’s ever seen Gwen outside of a group setting. As if she didn’t grab Gwen off a street corner on the way over like a kitten in a box.

Gwen waves. “Hey,” she says, awkward, because she’s still reeling over the floorlamp. The shade is rainbow. “Congrats on, uh…”

_“Opening night,”_ MJ whispers.

“Opening night.”

She’s still trying to figure out why she agreed to this. What compelled her to follow MJ— someone she can’t even think about without feeling nauseous— to a party full of people she doesn’t know.

It’s not too late, she supposes, to suddenly remember she has work tonight. And what a convenient time to remember, too, when everyone’s eyes are on her in the middle of this party that Gwen thinks is too brightly lit to actually be considered a party. She’s pretty sure you shouldn’t be able to actually see the person you’re making out with. Or know them, for that matter.

“You want a drink?” Someone asks instead of pointing out that Gwen doesn’t belong here.

She doesn’t realize she’s waiting for that moment until she can breathe evenly again.

“Sure,” She says, because MJ is fiddling with the phone connected to a speaker with an aux cord.

—

Here is what Gwen learns: MJ is much better at drinking than her. She’s no-pinched-lips good, two-drinks-in-and-perfectly-fine good. It’s infuriating. Three bitter drinks later and there’s not a hair out of place on her head, no seven-yard stare, no incurable smile.

Gwen wishes she could say the same, but her prideful need to match has left her hazy enough to agree to join the circle of people playing King’s Cup.

Gwen realizes this is getting out of hand around drink four. More than she usually has.

MJ still stands straight, and Gwen starts to wonder if she’d even _had_ alcohol in her cup and then she starts thinking about how nice it would be to lie down.

She should quit. She doesn’t.

They’re pressed so much closer than Gwen would like. MJ’s knee is practically on top of hers, their arms are overlapping where they hold their drinks up.

MJ is laughing at a joke that Gwen didn’t catch. Her cheeks are soft and flushed, and her hair falls out of her face when she leans her head back.

She looks like poetry. All the lines highlighted because they made her feel safe. Words so beautiful they made her want to cry.

Gwen is giggly, and light, and the cards on the table in front of her look like traffic lights do when she doesn’t have her glasses on.

It just makes her laugh harder.

MJ smiles at her, and her teeth look so _white._ Gwen wants to ask her if she bleaches them or if they’re just _like_ that.

“What?” MJ asks.

Gwen giggles. “Bokeh,” she says. “That’s the cards.”

MJ snorts, looks Gwen up and down. “Okay, I’m gonna get you a glass of water.”

She starts to stand, but Gwen takes her wrist, shakes her head. “I’m fine,” she dismisses, because she is. Totally. She can still _read_ the cards.

“I want a glass, too,” MJ says. She pries Gwen’s fingers away.

She’s a little wobbly, too. Gwen watches her weave around people, away from the game in front of them.

The game doesn’t stop. There is an empty couch cushion beside Gwen and still someone taps her on her knee and says, “We need a rhyme for _spaghetti”_ and when Gwen’s brain goes blank someone whoops, _drink!_ And she goes on without MJ.

She pulls the eight of spades, stares blankly at it until someone reminds her, _categories_ and she nods uselessly and says, “Ice cream flavors.”

Someone tugs at her cup, and she looks up to see MJ swapping it out for another solo cup.

“It’s water,” She reiterates when Gwen brings it up to her face to sniff it. She takes her seat back, sits far too elegantly for someone who has had four and a half drinks. “What’d I miss?”

“Ice cream flavors.” Gwen takes a greedy gulp of her drink. This water is the best thing she’s ever tasted. It’s heaven-sent. Nectar of the gods. How has she ever drank anything else? “I was always really bad at this game."

“What’s there to be bad at?”

“It’s the… What’s that called? When your hands don’t move as fast as your brain?”

MJ snorts. “Reaction time?”

“Yeah with the…. all the seven heaven stuff. And, like, four floor…. You gotta move fast.”

“That water’s not doing much, huh?” MJ says affectionately. She pushes her glass into Gwen’s hand. “Drink this one, too.”

Gwen stares at her hands. One of the cups is empty. Had she really drank it already?

“Probably a good idea,” She agrees.

“Take your turn since you missed it, MJ,” Someone (Gwen doesn’t catch who) says.

MJ puts a hand between Gwen’s shoulder blades to steady herself when she reaches forward and pulls a card. Flips it around.

“Jack. Everybody drinks.”

She slides the card under the beer tab.

She elbows Gwen. “That means you, too.”

They go around again. The second glass of water is practically gone when it’s Gwen’s turn to take a card.

“Five,” she says, and the guys all faux-groan as they take sips.

Gwen shoves her card under the tab of the can alongside all the other spent cards, and she hears a familiar hiss. A can cracking open.

“Uh,” She says. “I don’t think I should chug that.”

MJ stretches to grab the can, her chest firm against Gwen’s back.

Gwen thinks, _Boobs._

“Who wants it?” She holds the can above her head. “She’s cut off.”

She looks at MJ and she feels a familiar tug in her gut. It’s different than usual, dulled by rum and whatever mixer had been in her former cup. It’s gentler. It’s an instrument playing. A symphony. She’s suddenly so happy she’s sad, a grief that presses down on her chest until she can’t breathe.

She breaks off into laughter again.

“What’s so funny?” MJ asks. She turns back around.

“You’re really the best,” She says, and the corner of MJ’s lip twitches. She hands the beer off to someone passing by, says something that Gwen can’t quite hear.

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

“I think I figured out why I didn’t like you,” Gwen’s mouth says entirely without her permission.

MJ’s head snaps around. “You don’t like me?”

Gwen shakes her head. “I do now. I think. I mean, I don’t _think—_ I do like you, but I…”

“Okay, then…” MJ still looks… She’s got fuckin’ puppy dog eyes, wide and hurt. “Why _didn’t_ you like me?”

Gwen puts a finger to her lips. Whispers, _shhhhh._

“Yeah, I think it’s time to get you home,” MJ says. “Time to call an Uber.”

She wiggles her phone out of her back pocket. “Where do you live?”

—

They make it down to the street and Gwen takes in the beauty of the sparkling wet pavement. It must have rained.

From the cracked windows of the apartment they’d just left Gwen can hear distorted music. Muffled.

She says, “I love this song,” and sways to the beat. Hums along, breathes in the smell of rain on concrete mixed with garbage.

When MJ puts her hand out, Gwen doesn’t hesitate to take it, to move in closer. To step in a slow circle with their palms together and MJ’s hand on her hip.

They sing along to the empty street, feet splashing oily on their shins, their melody ahead of the melody from the apartment above them.

The skies aren’t clear yet. Even when the rain comes again, they keep spinning. MJ twirls her, giggles when she stumbles, and Gwen doesn’t mind. Keeps humming. Keeps watching MJ so, so close.

They get in the Uber and under her breath Gwen still mumbles, _rivers and roads, rivers and roads, rivers ’til I reach you._

_—_

She lays in bed that night and thinks, _I’m fucked._

—

Gwen wakes up in the morning with a headache and a bitter taste in her mouth.

The hangover is a physical manifestation of the monster that’s been ripping her open for months. She wakes, and the blood that’s been seeping out of her since she saw Harry and MJ’s fingers brush in the doorway of the diner has dried onto her mattress. Her bedsheets are stained.

She rolls out of bed, brushes her teeth. Watches herself in the mirror as she bounces, ignores the pounding in her head every time her heels connect with the cold tile floor. She shoves a bowl of cereal in her mouth while she paces, attention split between keeping the excess milk in the bowl and not tripping over the shoes she’d thrown off as soon as she’d gotten in the night before.

It’s one of those days where merely existing feels like wasted potential. Her head feels like it’s filled with cigarette ash, but that doesn’t stop her mind from racing, or her heart from beating, or the plasma in her blood from feeling electrified. Gwen is an exposed nerve. She’s a faulty light switch. She’s taking the stairs instead of the elevator, shouting into the empty stairwell just to relieve some pressure.

She’s always expected her _eureka_ moment to be lab-coat clad. She’s expected it among beakers and eye wash stations. She’s expected it to be news that could change the world. Or, at least, news that could change the world of a few people.

It came with rum. It came with red hair and striking eyes and a laugh that could revive flowers. It crashed into the planet of Gwen and disrupted the entire natural ecosystem.

The staircase isn’t enough; Gwen could run a marathon.

So she tells herself a joke about experimenting in college and when no one is there to laugh at it, she takes on the role. She laughs her way down the street and no one even blinks.

_This City,_ she thinks, _it doesn’t even notice we’re here._

She searches for herself in store windows, poses so her reflection is wearing a peacoat and a beret. The sun is over her shoulder. The roads smells like piss.

She turns into a boutique, grabs the first thing she sees that looks nothing like something she’d wear. She slides into a dressing room, throws her clothes on the floor unceremoniously, and gets changed.

The person she’s looking at in the mirror is wearing the gaudiest dress she’s ever seen. Patterned, colorful, lace. She feels gauche in it. She brings her hand up to her face with too much force, tugs at her cheeks with strength that shows off the red on her bottom eyelid.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” She tells her reflection. It doesn’t respond.

She buys the dress and shoves it deep into the back of her closet.

—

Her solution is distraction.

Or, rather, her solution comes in the form of a distraction. It isn’t deliberate.

Midterms roll up around the corner and she spends her days in class and her nights in the basement of the library. She creeps into the apartment well after her roommate is asleep and leaves well before she wakes.

She sees Peter once or twice. Mostly in passing. He slides into the seat across from her and says, “Hey, I have seventeen minutes until biochem can you show me how you did number twelve on the homework?”

And, technically, explaining the answers is the same as studying so she pulls out her notebook and does the problem until he has to sprint to make it to class on time.

Gwen doesn’t even realize how many invites she’s missed until after the tidal wave of work recedes. She finishes her final midterm, scarfs down a plateful of pasta and passes out.

She checks her phone the next morning. It’s full of texts that she’d opened and forgotten about: invitations to lunch, and study group invites. A few coffee offers, too, mostly from people who’d want to exchange notes while they were there. She has an inbox full of apologies to make.

And, though accidental, avoidance works. She doesn’t think about MJ.

At least, not until she’s standing in the middle of her kitchen.

—

Gwen isn’t sure what she expects MJ’s apartment to look like. Covered wall-to-wall with playbills and newspaper clippings, maybe. A theater kid/English major’s version of the Beautiful Minds wall.

It’s actually a studio apartment with white walls and the barest hint of pale color. Soft blues and pinks.

It’s cleaner than Gwen’s place, that’s for sure. More coherent, too, even with the couch shoved in against the foot of the bed and the fridge less than ten feet away from the toilet. They drop their shoes at the door, MJ throws on a pot of coffee, and they stand in an uncomfortable silence that Gwen hasn’t felt since orientation.

_We’re here… Now what._

MJ seems to feel the same way, because she suddenly whirls around and blurts out, “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

Gwen leans back with the force of the question.

“Huh?”

MJ pulls herself up on the counter. “I just— sorry, I didn’t like how quiet it was.”

Gwen shakes her anxiety as loose as she can.

“I wanted to be a doctor,” She says. She leans against the counter opposite of where MJ is sitting. “But, like, every kind of doctor.” She ticks the points off on her fingers, “Surgeon, pediatrician, oncologist, gynecologist, veterinarian.”

“Oh, so you just wanted to be well-versed in pussy.”

Gwen’s jaw drops. “I—” She starts, but she cuts herself off with an ungodly snort.

MJ’s eyes hold a prideful sparkle as she watches Gwen over the top of her coffee mug.

“Okay, so you wanted to be a doctor,” MJ says when Gwen has ridden herself of the giggles. “Now?”

Gwen chews her lip. “I just want to help people,” she explains with a shrug. “I was hoping to go into making pharmaceuticals? Maybe come back to school for biochemical engineering?”

“Smart girl. Ambitious.”

Gwen shrugs again. She’s been doing that a lot lately. “Modern medicine is incredible. We have the ability to help so many people— I want to be a part of that.”

“I see why Peter likes you.”

Gwen opens her mouth to protest. Thinks about the dress with the tag still on it. Closes her mouth. “But what about you?”

“An actress,” MJ says without hesitation. “And, I mean, I still do. But I want to make money, and…”

“So you chose _journalism?”_

“Not smart, huh?” She doesn’t sound regretful. “But don’t you ever just want to see how _much_ you can do?”

“How much what?”

MJ shakes her head, thoughtful, like she’s shuffling a bag of scrabble tiles to find the right words.

“How much _good._ How much _work._ How much… I just feel like we have endless potential. I want to live up to all of it.”

It’s too late for Gwen to pretend the poetics don’t intrigue her. She wants to lie, just to see how MJ would react if she told her, _life is a finite source._ She thinks MJ would cite Newton back to her, describe the universe as some unending recycling plant that turns them over and over. The upcycling of life’s very essence.

She can’t say any of that. She says instead, “I think about starting a band sometimes.”

It’s the right answer. She knows it is, because MJ doesn’t interject.

“I was, back in high school, in marching band, and I’m not terrible at drums. Not to be, like, big and famous, just to… Say I did.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Time? Life? Not enough friends who play instruments? Too much stuff would get in the way of moonlighting as a rock star.”

The daydream is nice, though. She likes the idea of being the bass pulsing in someone’s chest. Of being a part of someone’s life, be it heartbreak or first dance.

(Being someone’s favorite song, the one they choose to play when they get in the car. The one they make their friends shut up during. The one they pump the volume on and scream along to. She thinks about it and she aches in the same way she does when she hears MJ sigh.)

Or maybe just getting to hit something.

It wasn’t awkward after that.

“Remind me what I’m here for?” Gwen watches from the couch as MJ digs through a drawer under the bathroom sink.

“You said you’d let me take pictures of you for my photo class.”

“Right. Yeah. I did. What’s the— What’s the theme?”

“I’m gonna make you look like a 1960’s housewife.”

“Oh. Uh. Okay?”

“It’s— We have to do a photoshoot inspired by a piece of media, and I pulled Mad Men of all things, so…”

Gwen nods. “Right. That’s the, uh. The advertising show. Why didn’t you stick Harry in a suit and sit him behind a desk?”

MJ shrugs. “The women have better storylines,” She says simply. “Plus, I see him all the time, and I thought it would be a fun excuse for us to hang out.”

MJ throws the makeup she’d been sifting through onto the coffee table.

“There’s a dress hanging next to the shower curtain. If it doesn’t fit perfectly we can just pin it.”

It’s a gingham shirtwaist dress.

“Where did you get this?” She asks through the closed bathroom door as she gets changed.

“I’m borrowing it from the costume department. Just… Don’t tell them.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut.” She steps out of the bathroom and curtseys. “Well, how do I look?” She asks with a poor attempt at a transatlantic accent.

“Surprisingly good in orange.”

Hair is next.

“It’s incredibly fortunate you can pull off bangs.” MJ scrunches Gwen’s hair in her hands.“Because we need them.”

“Thank my fivehead.”

MJ pulls her bangs back, frowns at Gwen’s reflection. She presses her hand just above her eyebrows. “Nope, only four fingers fit.”

Gwen can’t help laughing.

They go with a half-up Bouffant, curl the strands that hang down. She looks like she belongs in a country club. One of the nice ones, with champagne. MJ burns her hand on the curling iron and Gwen learns just how creative she is with words. There’s some compound swears in there that never would have occurred to her.

She does her makeup sitting in the sink. Turns when she does, hangs her legs over the side.

“Do I look good enough to marry Jon Hamm?” She asks.

“Almost…” MJ reaches over her to parse through the makeup bag. “Let me see this color—“

The inside of MJ’s thighs press against the outside of Gwen’s. She leans in close.

MJ cups Gwen’s jaw, rests her chin in the meat between her thumb and index finger. Her fingers splay across her cheek, gentle and soft.

The lipstick smells like vanilla. MJ drags it across her lips, wipes excess away with the pad of the thumb holding her face in place.

Gwen’s brain short circuits. MJ is looking so intently at the tapestry of Gwen’s face.

She’s pretty sure her body is on fire. She’s grateful for the thick layer of foundation that’s keeping her cheeks from totally giving her away. It doesn’t amend for the heat down her neck, under her collar, the butterflies ramming into the lining of her stomach.

MJ scans her face one more time. Gwen swallows.

(This is going to haunt her fantasies.)

MJ pulls away.

“Looks perfect.”

The next hour and a half is a blur. Pictures are taken, tea kettles boil over, Gwen makes eggs that she nearly stains the dress with.

It reminds her of being a kid, standing in front of looming white backgrounds and showing off the logo on her t-shirt. Grinning wide for the camera so she could get McDonald’s after and put money away for her college fund.

That was a long time ago. Bringing it up seems unnecessary. MJ hadn’t asked for her resume. Gwen doesn’t give it to her.

She just poses and smiles. Stares down the barrel of a bottle of whiskey and looks exhausted. Hangs a hat on the door. Polishes shoes.

The whole time, she thinks about MJ’s thumb dragging across her lip.

By the time she takes her makeup off, it’s after midnight.

“You can stay the night.” MJ is scrubbing shoe polish off of her dining table with a sponge. “It’s late, I don’t want to, like, throw you out.”

“I’d hate to intrude.” Gwen squints at her mascara-stained face.

MJ looks unimpressed with the excuse. “If you were intruding, I wouldn’t have offered.” 

And Gwen thinks, _The couch looks comfortable enough._

And Gwen thinks, _What’s the worst that could happen?_

And Gwen thinks about how fiercely MJ had looked at her.

“Yeah, sure,” She says, because she wants to see MJ smile.

—

It becomes a fight. MJ refuses to let Gwen sleep on the couch. She stands with her feet planted firmly on the fake hardwood and her arms crossed over her chest. Gwen won’t kick MJ out of her own bed, she’s eyeing her keys on the table, and MJ is whining _let me be a good host!_ And Gwen is arguing, _let me be a good guest!_ And that’s how they end up in the bed together.

It had seemed bigger from the outside, more open space and less…

They’re shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. MJ mumbles something in her sleep and Gwen’s heart jumps.

She didn’t expect _this:_ soft breath and brushing skin.

Gwen has had sleepovers before, has slept in the same bed as her friends. Fuck, she’s fallen asleep spooning them with their heads on the same pillow and their ankles interlocked. This is different.

(This is MJ.)

She spends most of the night listening to the muffled remains of whatever crime show the neighbors are watching. It’s some documentary, one of those unsolved, cold-case files that pretend to end ambiguously after spending an hour picking a clear killer. By the time she (finally) falls asleep, she’s deduced that it was probably the cousin.

When she wakes up, she learns that MJ sleeps like a maniac: legs akimbo, head thrashing, and arms overlocked just below her headboard.

Gwen wakes to a knee pinning her hip to the bed. There’s a hand on her pillow, with fingers curled into the hair just above her ear. MJ’s face isn’t very far, either; she’s fallen between their two pillows, head bent at a wonky angle.

Gwen doesn’t hate herself for feeling like she does, she’d tripped over that step and fallen into a pool of realization. She’d nearly drowned in it, over twenty years of not knowing herself. She turns old scenarios over in her head and it’s like watching them in 3D.

(Her heart would jump when the goalie from the soccer team would braid her hair. She’d dig her fingers into the dirt until the grass tickled her palms, sit still as a rod until she was properly fish-tailed.

She’d spend history class enraptured with the notches of the spine of the girl in front of her. How the muscles in her shoulder would move when she leaned to the side to whisper a joke to the guy next to her.

She fell away from childhood best friends when they got boyfriends, ripped their photos from her wall and tore them apart. She struck them from the record. She grieved. How had she never noticed how much she’d grieved?

Re-evaluating her own life is watching every memory under a microscope. She’s taken off her straight-tinted glasses, but there are still imprints on her nose, remnants of the person she’d thought she was. She feels like a historian, digging up artifacts and giving them new names; putting them on display under spotlights.

She’s dated boys, had their hands on hers, on her collarbone, on her pulse point and her thighs. She’s liked them and their hungry gazes, and the way tailored suit pants squeeze in all the right places. She’s liked men in the backseats of cars and at candlelit dinners. The realization feels like falling down a spiral staircase. Like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. Like writing _I shall not tell lies_ until it’s etched into her skin.

She knows it just like she knows this:)

She hates that it’s MJ.

MJ, who’s dating a guy.

MJ, who carves out a space in her life for anyone who needs it.

MJ, who is a magnet.

(In that Gwen doesn’t totally understand her, but she wants to, wants to, wants to.)

If it was anyone else, any random girl from chem lab or the dining hall, Gwen would handle it better. She wouldn’t plague Gwen’s existence with dirty jokes and tight shirts.

Gwen could go home, and think about her, and it wouldn’t feel like a betrayal. Being around her wouldn’t be torture (and being away wouldn’t feel like withdrawal).

She might even ask her out, confront the (metaphorical) beast. Address the (figurative) elephant.

Instead, she watches MJ sleep.

The room flushes pink with sunrise, and Gwen finally drifts off again. When she wakes for the second time, the bed is empty.

“Mmm, it’s about time you got up,” MJ says when Gwen sits up. She’s sitting at the table painting her nails. “There’s a bag of donuts on the counter.”

Gwen stretches. She hears something pop in her neck. “You got breakfast?”

“There’s a Dunkin’ a block over.” She holds up her hand for Gwen to see. “Is this pink too bright?”

Gwen shakes her head. “It’s nice.”

“Want some?”

And Gwen is in so, so deep already, but she slides into the seat opposite MJ anyway.

“I don’t think pink is my color,” She says as MJ picks her hand up off the table. Gwen reaches across and slides MJ’s mug over to her and takes a long sip.

“I think you’ll look good in any color,” MJ dismisses. Her thumb traces Gwen’s lifeline, and she hides her shudder with another gulp of coffee. “You have a clear coat on?”

“Nope. Gloves just take it off anyway.”

“What kind of weak ass nail polish are you using?”

“Whatever’s at the dollar store.”

“Your nails deserve better than that.”

“My bank account doesn’t. It turns out that manning the research section of the library won’t make me a millionaire.”

“A shame. I was counting on being your trophy wife. Other hand, please.”

—

The next time Gwen sees her, MJ wordlessly sets a bottle of chip-free nail polish in front of her.

—

When the door is thrown open, everyone jumps except Peter.

MJ looks maniacal in the doorway. Her grin reminds Gwen of witch Halloween decorations. _bubble bubble toil and trouble._ She’s holding a rolled-up newspaper over her head like a knight about to charge into battle. She is, as always, interesting enough to draw their attention away from the television.

“Who had ‘child model’ on their Gwen Stacy bingo card?” 

“Oh God,” Gwen groans as Peter and Harry demand, _“What?”_

“I present to you the face—“

“Where did you even get that?”

“—Of Old Navy’s 2009 summer collection!” She opens the magazine with a flick of her wrist. Gwen rubs at her temples in hopes of soothing the migraine MJ has brought with her.

It’s one of the less embarrassing pictures, at least: ten year old Gwen lounging on a beach towel by a green-screened lake. She has an unopened box of sparklers in one hand, a small American flag in the other. Unfortunately, there’s no getting around the fact that she’s dressed like an Old Navy model. Jorts and all.

There’s so much red, white, and blue on the page Gwen is surprised that MJ could even find her.

Harry snatches the magazine from her hand and holds it close to his face like it will help him see better. Peter hooks his chin over his shoulder and looks, too.

_I hate you,_ Gwen mouths at MJ. All she gets in return is a devilish smile.

“I was trying to find your LinkedIn, and I saw your references—“

“This story is already creepy.”

“And I saw a modeling agency, and I thought it couldn’t possibly be you, so I looked you up, and this magazine showed up.”

“How did you _end up_ with the magazine.”

“Oh, easy, there’s a whole collector’s market for them.”

“I’d like to go on the record and say that you sound insane, and also that it sounds like something Peter would do.” Harry thumbs through the pages with such vigor that Gwen braces herself for the inevitable rip.

“How much did you pay for that?”Gwen makes room on the couch for MJ, but she perches on the edge of the coffee table. The noses of their shoes kiss.

“A lady never tells her secrets.”

“Well, my secret is that I have a copy, and if you’d just _asked...”_

If the mistake hurts her, MJ doesn’t let on.

“Why didn’t you mention it?”

Gwen shrugs. “It didn’t come up.”

“You were literally modeling for me. You could have brought it up at _any_ time.”

“Why do you look like you’re secretly in pain?” Harry holds the magazine up beside her face. He frowns as he compares, his eyes jumping from the pages to her face. Serious, like he’s studying for a test, or solving a spot-the-difference puzzle.

“I got my braces taken off, like, twenty minutes before that photo shoot,” Gwen says, pushing away Harry’s arms. “I _was_ secretly in pain.”

“I can’t believe I had the opportunity to work with _the_ Gwen Stacy,” MJ says. “I took pictures of you for _free.”_

“And you only got a B. Next time I’m charging.”

“It was a B+, and the note said _very nice.”_

“Why were you trying to find my LinkedIn?” Gwen plucks the magazine from Harry’s hands, closes it, and throws it onto the table beside MJ.

“I heard that people with more followers get more job offers. I was giving you a…” She reaches down and picks up Gwen’s ankle. “Leg up.”

Without saying a word, Gwen picks up the newspaper, rolls it up, and swats her with it.

“How do you even get _into_ child modeling?” Peter asks.

“Sometimes the people standing in the mall with clipboards _aren’t_ trying to scam you.”

“Also, she’s pretty,” Harry supplies.

“I was very… Gangly.”

“Six point word,” Peter says.

“You know what this means, though.” MJ leans closer.

(Gwen has a flash of a couple weeks before, a hand on her jaw. Eyes, eyes, eyes.)

“You have to put on a fashion show for us.”

Peter adds, “Preferably all Old Navy clothes.”

—

MJ shows up at her door well after nine. She’s dressed up, some skin-tight outfit hugging her hips. Her makeup is smeared, eyes tinged with eyeshadow and smeared mascara like charcoal.

She looks like someone who is trying very hard to look like they haven’t been crying.

“Hey,” Gwen says, and tries not to feel underdressed in her t-shirt and pajama pants. “What’s up?”

“Can I come in?” MJ asks. “I’d have called, but my phone is dead.”

Gwen blinks at her, trying to successfully piece together the image of MJ on her doorstep and the question.

“I, uh— yeah, of course. You’re always welcome, you know that.”

She steps aside and lets MJ step in.

Gwen watches her take in the sight of the apartment, and she’s suddenly struck by the thought that she should have dusted before MJ got here. Done the dishes that have been piling up in the sink since Wednesday.

“How was the show? I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. I had…”

“Work, I know. Peter told me.” MJ’s voice is thick. She picks up one of the pictures from the credenza. “You did ballet?”

She sounds surprised.

“For a few years, yeah.”

“You’re a woman of mystery, Gwen Stacy.”

(She doesn’t try to be. She just tries not to be the kind of person who wears things that don’t suit them. Sometimes, that means hiding more of her wardrobe than she’d like.)

It’s a picture of the dance company at her last recital. Sophomore year of high school, before life got too busy to go to lessons three times a week and spend her weekends camping out in the lobby of some high school downtown waiting around between sporadic performances.

It was a period of her life that smelled notably of hair spray and sweat.

“MJ, are you…” Gwen trails off when MJ turns to look at her. Hair mussed, heels firm against the hardwood, mask pulled away. Gwen stares at her shoulder to avoid the gaze that is suddenly far too intense.

“Harry and I broke up.”

“My, uh. My pajamas are in the top drawer of my dresser,” Gwen says.

She does some of the dishes while MJ gets changed, sweeps the clean tupperware she’s had sitting on the counter into a cabinet. She can deal with that later.

Nothing prepares her for seeing MJ in her clothes. A pair of flannel pants that she wears as capris, a T-shirt that reads WOMEN IN STEMon it. She’s pulled her hair back and wiped off her makeup, and Gwen has to force herself to _stop staring_ when MJ trails her into the living room and plops down on the couch like she belongs (and she does, she really, really does).

“I don’t cry over boys,” MJ says, even as she accepts the pint of ice cream Gwen holds out to her. Her face lights up when she reads the label. “I didn’t think you liked rocky road.”

She doesn’t. Almonds make her gag. It’s MJ’s favorite, though.

(There’s always some in Gwen’s freezer.)

“Let’s cry over a movie instead,” Gwen says. She leans over MJ, arm brushing her shoulder, to get to the television remote.

“What did you have in mind?” MJ stabs the spoon into the ice cream with more force than is necessary.

“It’s your not-heartbreak,” Gwen says. “We can watch The Last Five Years again.”

MJ hums in acknowledgement rather than affirmation. She unearths a marshmallow and offers the spoon out to Gwen. Gwen leans over and eats it off the spoon as MJ asks,

“Have you ever seen Life is Beautiful?”

It isn’t on Netflix, so they put Gwen’s laptop on the coffee table and watch it on some website riddled with porn advertisements. They have to sit close together to watch the screen, thighs pressed against thighs and elbows bumping when MJ digs another bite of ice cream out of the sweating container.

“You know, it really isn’t heartbreak,” MJ says during a quiet part of the movie.

Gwen shifts her attention from the subtitles to MJ. “Huh?”

“Harry, it’s not…” She stabs her spoon into the ice cream again. It’s soft enough now that it just yields. When she pulls it out, there’s melted sugar halfway up the handle. “I mean, I liked— I _like_ him well enough, he just… he’s got a lot of shit, y’know? And I want to be his friend, I don’t want him to be—” She licks the spoon clean. Gwen keeps her eyes on a point just beyond where her mouth was on the metal. “I’m not a therapist. And neither is Peter, for that matter.”

“So you didn’t…?”

“Love him? No, I don’t think so.” She crooks her ankle around Gwen’s.

“What did he say?” Gwen asks. “I mean, what happened?”

“He just went off the rails. Mostly on Peter. Kept implying that I was cheating on him.”

“With Peter?” Gwen raises an eyebrow. MJ laughs.

“With Peter. And probably other people. He wasn’t particularly specific.”

Gwen frowns. “Woof.”

“Woof, indeed.” MJ shakes her head. “But, honestly, I don’t need all that. A relationship, I mean.” She shoots Gwen a goofy grin. “Not when I’ve got you.”

When she rests her head on Gwen’s shoulder, Gwen is certain she’s going to implode.

“Want me to eat his heart in the marketplace?” Gwen asks, just to hear MJ laugh.

The movie makes them cry exactly like it’s meant to.

—

“You don’t look great,” Gwen says when she sees Peter.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Want some?” She rubs the lipstick off the rim of her coffee cup with her thumb and holds it out to him.

“You’re the best.” He takes a long swig. Gwen frowns. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?”

She takes her cup back. “No, you’re fine. I just wanted to— I heard about last night.”

His eyes widen. “Did Harry--”

“No, no. MJ came over. I wanted to make sure you were okay, though, ‘cause I know— What happened to your face?”

Gwen reaches out and cups his cheek before he can pull away. In the sunlight, the bruise blooming on his temple is obvious.

It’s her turn to ask, “Did Harry—”

Peter pulls away. “Jesus, _no._ He can be an ass but he’d never…” He shakes his head. “Flash opened a door into my face.”

“Flash _opened a door_ into your face?”

“Not on purpose. I mean, I don’t think it was on purpose.” Peter ghosts his hand over the mark. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

“So you’re—”

“I’m fine,” He assures, despite the deep-set circles under his eyes.

Gwen narrows her eyes, and he doubles down.

“Really, I’m _fine._ Harry is… We’re working on it. But I’m alright. Don’t worry about me. How’s MJ?”

“Still asleep last I saw, but she seems okay. You know how she is.”

“If you need to reschedule…” Peter starts, and she shakes her head.

“She knows where the food is, and I _really_ need to do well on this test, so.”

—

Gwen gets home with coffee and finds MJ awake and staring at a Youtube video of candy being made.

She watches over her shoulder for a few minutes, hypnotized by the speed at which logs of hard candy can be chopped, before asking, “What stage of the breakup are we at now?”

“Hmm…” MJ takes a long, thoughtful sip of her coffee. She stares off into the distance of Gwen’s living room and says, “Taylor Swift.”

So they hop in her car and leave city limits and they scream along to every breakup song they can think of until MJ’s laugh is no longer so heavy it falls to her lap.

—

Gwen rolls and unrolls the script in her hand.

“You don’t have to be nervous,” MJ says. “It’s just me.”

“I’m not nervous,” Gwen blinks as she says it. “I just… Acting. Not exactly my strong suit.”

“You don’t have to act. Just read the words that aren’t highlighted. Look, we’ll start…” MJ takes the script from Gwen’s hand. She frowns down at the pages and flips through. She stops, points to a line, and hands the packet back. “Here, your line.”

Gwen reads it about as well as wet cardboard holds things.

MJ is right, though, it gets easier. Her tongue sticks, less, to the roof of her mouth. She starts to feel less like the Google translate bot and more like an actual human. (Stumbling, sometimes, but with a little bit of feeling). She thinks reading lines might be fun, even, when the bed beside her is dipped with MJ’s weight.

“Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?” She asks, eyes drifting back and forth between the page and MJ.

It’s nice to watch her like this, so in her element. It’s different than when she writes, there’s more to look at— the subtleties of MJ’s face change as she speaks. The way she shapes emotions with her hands, the gentle back and forth of her breath with the iambic pentameter.

“Yea, and I will weep a while longer.”

“I will not desire that.”

Gwen turns the page.

“You have no reason. I do it freely.”

“Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wronged.”

Gwen pulls her legs under herself. Her neck is cramping from leaning over the script. There’s only one copy, which means knocking heads and bent spines.

“Ah,” MJ says with rightful indignation, “how much might the man deserve of me that would right her!”

“Is there any way to show such friendship?”

“A very even way, but no such friend.”

“May a man do it?” Gwen asks. The line is a flat tire in her mouth, it comes out clunky and uneven. She grips the script tighter without meaning to.

MJ takes Gwen’s wrist in hand and moves her hand aside, off of the meat of the page. Gwen reads ahead as MJ finds her place. Something lodges in her throat. “It is a man’s office, but not yours.”

Gwen swallows. She reads the line once, then twice. MJ’s hand is still on her wrist; Gwen can feel her pulse in her thumb.

Gwen chokes out, “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is that not strange?”

She can’t stop her gaze from snapping to MJ’s face. She’s so close like this, half bent over Gwen’s lap, holding her opposite hand. Gwen doesn’t expect to see MJ watching her face, her smile dreamlike.

“As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you, but believe me not, and yet I lie not. I confess nothing, nor deny nothing.”

She’s such a good actress her pupils dilate. Gwen wonders what _(who)_ she’s thinking about.

Gwen is entranced.

She forces herself to look back down at the script.

“You missed a line,” she breathes.

“Did I?”

Gwen can still feel MJ’s eyes on her.

“‘I am sorry for my cousin,’” Gwen quotes.

MJ clears her throat and moves back. “Right,” she says, a frown in her voice.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gwen assures. “I mean, you’re still learning the lines so missing one isn’t, like, the end of the world.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just…” MJ shakes her head, like she’s clearing away the cobwebs that tangled her up. She pulls the script from Gwen’s hand and tosses it onto her couch. “Let’s take a break.”

“I’m gonna get some water.” Because her mouth is dry and she needs to breathe. Needs to get off this coffin of a bed.

She can’t cross the room to the sink fast enough.

MJ flops onto her back. “I don’t know what you mean acting isn’t your thing. That was fucking _amazing._ Seriously. You should audition for the next show.”

Gwen snorts, grateful that she’s facing away from MJ because she’s sure a confession is printed plain across her face. A headline. _Extra, extra! Read all about it! Gwen Stacy is in love with her best friend!_

“With what free time?” She asks.

MJ snorts. “Point taken. Grab me a glass too?”

“Besides…” Gwen hands one of the waters to MJ and kneels on the couch. “If I’m in the show, I can’t watch you.”

“And here I thought you closed your eyes while I was onstage,” MJ teases.

Something washes over Gwen. Bravery, maybe. Stupidity? Either way, MJ is close enough for Gwen to reach out and touch, but far enough away that Gwen can run, and that could be why she starts, “You act like it’s possible to look away from you. You could be—”

A knock on the window cuts Gwen off. She nearly snaps her spine twisting to look behind her. She can make out a figure on the fire escape, hunched and wobbling. She stifles a yelp.

“Shit,” MJ says, throwing her feet over the side of the bed.

“What are you doing?” Gwen half whispers. She grabs MJ’s elbow. “Don’t go over there!”

MJ shrugs her off and kneels down on the window seat in front of the window.

Gwen can’t believe she’s going to die the most ridiculous horror movie death. Murdered in a tiny studio apartment because her friend doesn’t have basic common sense. They’re the couple in the beginning of the slasher film, and their bodies are going to be found by the downstairs neighbors when the blood starts to seep into their ceiling.

“You have shitty timing,” MJ says as she slides the window open. “Gwen’s here.”

Gwen opens her mouth to say, _keep me out of this._

Instead, what comes out is, _“Peter?”_

He’s looking at her over MJ’s shoulder. He waves, and his smile tapers off into a wince.

“You’re a mess,” MJ says.

“Will you just let me in?” An added afterthought, “Please?”

“There ya go, Tiger. That’s the magic word.”

MJ lets him steady himself on her shoulder as he climbs through.

“Peter?” Gwen repeats.

He’s bent over on himself, one hand clutching at his chest. His face is covered in cuts and dried blood, flecks of it fall off of him when he moves to push his hair back on his forehead.

The suit hits her after the initial panic.

“Hey, Gwendy,” he says, faux-casual. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“You’re Spider-Man,” she says dumbly.

“I—” He starts, and for a moment he looks like he’s contemplating bullshitting her. Instead, he purses his lips together. “Yeah. It’s, uh. It’s kind of a thing.”

“A thing _I_ have to deal with,” MJ says, not unkindly. She grabs a sewing kit from her end table. “What was it this time?”

“Fisk,” he says, plopping down on the edge of the bed. “Fuckin’— someone gave him a sword. He went all Kill Bill on my ass.”

“Volume One or Volume Two?” Gwen blurts out before she can stop herself.

“Volume One, by the looks of things.” MJ guides Peter to turn around by his shoulders. The wound spans from one side of his collar bone to the other. Gwen cringes.

“Definitely volume one,” Peter agrees. He winces when MJ presses a washcloth to it. _“Fuck!_ Warn me next time.”

“Don’t get sliced open next time,” MJ shoots back.

“Do you still have the clothes I left here?” Peter asks. He clenches his fist in the duvet, face turning red as he struggles to stay still.

“No, I gave them to my boyfriend.”

Peter and Gwen both stare at her. MJ looks between them.

“I’m _kidding._ Jeez. They’re in the dresser, right where you left them. You can use my shower, too.”

Gwen is well aware she’s staring. She thinks it might be justified. Peter is sitting right across from her, Spider-Man suit pulled down around his waist, with a 10-inch long gash across his chest, and he’s joking about it.

And _MJ_ is joking, too, lips upturned with snark as she pours more alcohol into the rag.

Like she’s done this a million times. Answering the knock on the fire escape the same as she would the front door.

“It doesn’t look too deep,” MJ says. “Maybe this one will finally scar, though. It’ll make you look rugged.”

“I’m blessed with flawless skin,” Peter says. “You know this. Clearsil tried to get me to be the model for their after pictures. Blemish free.”

“Spiders don’t get pimples or scar, blah blah blah. Quit bragging about it.” MJ hands him the rag, and he cradled it gingerly in his hand. “You ready for stitches?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not with this one.”

Peter looks at Gwen. “Want to bet on how many stitches? Price is Right rules. Loser buys coffee.”

“Don’t mind him,” MJ says. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

She does mouth, _Guess fifty._

“Jesus— that many?”

“Hey, no cheating!”

MJ shrugs.

“Fifty,” Gwen says. MJ smirks.

Peter narrows his eyes at her. “Sixty five.”

It’s Gwen’s turn to shrug.

“You’re handling this well,” Peter says. “Almost as well as MJ did.”

“I handled it well because I figured it out.” MJ sounds smug. “You just _happened_ to tell me.”

“I still think you’re lying.”

“Peter, the school got attacked by Sandman—“

“Great, this again.”

“— And you disappeared and just _happened_ to show back up after Spider-Man left.”

“Correlation is _not_ causation.”

Gwen shakes her head. “Yeah, that definitely doesn’t apply here. You just admitted to a correlation.”

“Thank you, Gwen.”

Peter grumbles.

“Pete, you made it so obvious I’m surprised Flash hasn’t noticed yet.”

Gwen clears her throat. “Speaking of— I take it Flash didn’t hit you with a door.”

“What?”

“A few weeks ago. Your…” She points to her temple.

“Oh.” Peter coughs. “No, that was a carjacker. Flash is just an easy lie.”

“You should be nicer to him,” Gwen says, “He idolizes you.”

“No— _Yowch—_ He idolizes Spider-Man. _I_ don’t owe him shit. You know, I beat him in a fight once. Knocked him across the gym. It felt great—”

“Doesn’t count,” MJ says without missing a beat. “You were spidered up.”

“I still won.”

“Yeah, yeah,” MJ says, unimpressed. “Are you staying here tonight?”

Peter shakes his head. “No, Harry’s coming back from dinner with his dad soon. You know how that goes.”

“Want me to come over?”

“No offense, Em, but you’re still one of the last people he wants to see right now.”

“Why?” She teases, “Because we’re having an affair?”

Gwen’s eyes ping-pong between them.

“C’mon.”

She sighs. “Right, right. We’re not allowed to joke about it.”

“Especially not tonight.”

“You don’t have to put up with it. It’s not your prob—”

“He’s my friend, MJ. What am I gonna do? Walk out?”

She gets the impression they’ve had this argument before.

Gwen feels like she’s hearing about secrets-that-aren’t-secrets. If she asked, they’d probably tell her. She doesn’t want to, though. They aren’t meant for her, not right now.

It doesn’t usually bother Gwen how much closer the others are. They’d met before her.

She doesn’t think they mean to exclude, either, even when they speak some language Gwen doesn’t quite understand. They’ve all built cities beneath each other’s skin, she was still standing in the airport with her luggage.

MJ doesn’t answer.

Peter distracts himself by blabbering about some television show Gwen has never seen. She only half-listens, focused more on the dimple that forms in MJ’s cheek when she frowns. More focused on the heft of the script in her lap. 

“Sixty-three,” MJ announces.

“Ha!” Peter sticks his tongue out at Gwen. “I was closer.”

“Nuh-uh. Price is right rules,” she reminds, and snorts at how his face falls.

“I liked it better when you didn’t know.” His smile betrays him.

—

Gwen walks home and thinks about the things she almost said.

_You could be onstage with the most talented, most attractive actors in the world and I’d still only look at you._

She falls asleep to the haunting image of MJ’s nimble fingers working a needle through Peter’s flesh.

—

“Are you _sure_ you want to do this?” Peter asks for the fifteenth time. “Because I’d really rather not get thrown up on again.”

Gwen risks another glance down at the street. It’s a dizzying drop. She watches the tops of people’s heads as they walk.

“I’m sure,” She says, even as she backs away.

“Afraid of heights?”

“A healthy amount. Mostly of falling from them.”

“That’s half the fun.” Gwen can’t see his face under the mask, but she knows he’s grinning.

“You’re the human version of whatever that… That term for the compulsion to jump off of tall buildings is.”

“I think it’s literally called the High Places Phenomenon.”

“My friends and I we used to—“ She risks another glance down. “We’d drive out to the suburbs and climb water towers.”

If she closes her eyes, she can feel the ladder rungs on her palms. They were always rusted, creaking things, warped and indented from years of (dis)use.

Her name was probably still on the towers, somewhere, written in permanent marker on the highest point she could reach: _Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy. Oh, the places she’ll go._

Then they’d drink whatever alcohol would be the least missed from their parents’ liquor cabinet and climb back down.

They took their lives in their hands so willingly back then.

“Are you stalling?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“Need a push?”

“Yeah, probably.” Gwen realizes what she’s agreed to just before Peter’s hands land between her shoulder blades. “Wait, don’t act—“

She cuts herself off with a soundless scream.

She watches the ground get closer and thinks, for the second time in a week, _I’m going to die because my friend is an idiot._

She doesn’t fall far, two stories at most, before Peter grabs her around the waist.

“Sorry! Sorry! You said that right as I started to—“

“Why would you—“

“You said yes!”

“I didn’t realize you were being _serious!”_

She has one arm wrapped around his neck. She knows her nails must be digging into his healing collarbone, but he doesn’t complain. “I could have _died!”_

“I wasn’t going to let fall!”

“That’s _exactly_ what you did!”

“Okay, you know what I meant. But look! It’s fine, I’ve got you!”

He does. She doesn’t slip.

Gwen acclimates to the feeling. Kind of. It’s stomach dropping, panic-inducing. Maybe she’s just going nuts, but she almost starts to like it. Wind messing up her hair, eyes squinting against it. It’s like a rollercoaster, just without a seatbelt, or lap bar, or any other legally-enforced safety measures.

She doesn’t loosen her grip.

When sirens scream by underneath them, Gwen could swear they stop in midair. Peter looks at her, a silent question. Pleading, almost.

She nods.

They make a U-turn.

It’s a robbery, what Peter would refer to as “amateur hour.” A bank, few hostages, some broken glass but no real injuries. Gwen waits on a rooftop across the street, paces and gnaws on her nails. She tries to ignore the sound of gunshots, but when Peter’s head pops up over the side of the building, her shoulders drop.

They stop so Peter can get changed in the alley behind a restaurant.

“So what did you think?” He asks, and Gwen rubs her chin and considers.

“It’s better than the water towers,” She tells him, but secretly she just likes that she got to feel, even for a second, like a hero.

They head home, the feeling fades.

“Jesus, what happened to you guys?” Harry has half a sandwich in his hand. He looks at them suspiciously, and Gwen realizes (too late) that they don’t look great.

Her clothes and hair are rumpled from swinging around, and Peter has a bruise forming around the corner of his eye.

It looks like either A) they got mugged or B) something went horribly wrong while they were hooking up.

Gwen opens her mouth to swear up and down that it wasn’t the second option, but Peter is faster and louder, so the excuse becomes,

“Gwen punched me!”

Gwen’s mouth drops. She jerks her head to look at Peter, and all he manages is a sheepish grimace.

Harry looks between them, mouth ajar. “Gwen _punched_ you?”

Peter doubles down, “I was trying to teach her how to fight.”

“You _punched_ him?”

Gwen tugs at a strand of hair. “I— Yeah. Yeah, I punched him.”

Harry looks her up and down. “No way. No offense, Gwen, but I don’t think you could do that much damage.”

“That’s sexist,” Peter and Gwen say together, and she wants to wring his neck, just a little bit.

“It’s not sexist. Have you seen her arms?”

Gwen scowls. “They’re toned!”

“They’re bone,” Harry corrects. “Fine, then…” He extends his arms, an open _come at me_ gesture. “Prove it.”

Gwen blinks. “What?”

“Give me a black eye.” She searches his face for irony and finds none. Instead, she finds blown pupils and twitching muscles. He’s green around the gills.

She swallows. “I’m not going to punch you, Har.”

“So then what were you two doing?”

His tone makes her stumble back. Aggressive and accusative. She runs her hand through her bangs.

“We already told you, man,” Peter says. He sounds like he’s figuring something out, haughty and cautious.

“And I called bullshit.”

Gwen catches on to the way he moves his feet to stay upright. He’s swaying slightly, and his grip on the sandwich is too tight. Denting the bread.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peter dismisses. His voice is steely.

“Then show me what he taught you.” Harry’s voice is thick, but not with tears.

“You’re being an ass,” Peter says. He’s edging his way between them. “Whatever, look, if you’re gonna act like this we’ll go somewhere else.”

“Instead of just _telling_ me what you were up to? Like there’s nothing weird about that.”

“There isn’t!”

“Then why are you _lying?”_

Gwen wasn’t sure which of them she should be looking at: Peter, with his stone face and half-balled fists, or Harry and his hazy demeanor and wide stance.

“We’re _not.”_

“There’s obviously no way Gwen gave you that black eye.”

“Okay,” Gwen started, “First of all—“

“Maybe if you weren’t so fucked up—“ Peter shot back, over her. “— You wouldn’t be so paranoid all the time.”

Gwen isn’t sure how this had gone so downhill. She’s uncomfortable. Also, decently annoyed. She pictures MJ showing up to her front door with fucked-up makeup, dressed up and trying not to cry. She hears her voice, thick and jagged while she talks about Harry’s accusations.

(“He’s got a lot of shit, y’know?” Her brain echoes, and she rages back, “that’s not my problem.”)

She weighs consequences and the scale breaks.

“Alright, you know what?” She rolls her sleeve up. Neither of them are looking at her, but they notice when she crosses the distance and nails him him in the face.

He staggers back with a shout. Gwen cradles her fist to her chest.

“I—“ She starts immediately, face dropping. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

“You should never tell a girl in STEM she can’t do something,” Peter says, and he almost sounds proud.

Harry pulls his hand away from his face. His eyes are wide, and he looks at Gwen in shock. There’s a red mark on his cheek, right below his eye.

“Shit,” Gwen says again. “I’m so sorry! Are you—“

“Shit,” Harry echoes. “Shit, Stacy, you’ve got a hell of an arm.”

She reaches out for his face, but he moves away. “I’m _so,_ so sorry. I shouldn’t have—“

“We should go,” Peter says. He pulls Gwen back by her elbow. “And you should, uh, definitely put ice on that. It’s going to bruise.”

Gwen doesn’t get a chance to find out how the scene would have played out if they’d stayed.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Peter asks when they’re behind the closed front door.

“My, uh— My dad wanted me to be able to, y’know, and— I just punched Harry.”She’s shaking.

“He deserved it.”

“Peter, not all of us just go around _punching_ people.”

“He was _literally_ asking for it.” Peter slaps a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll have a bruise for a few days, he’ll learn his lesson. Is your hand okay?”

Gwen blinks at him. “It’s fine,” She says.

“Then don’t worry about it.”

They never mention it again.

—

When Gwen’s alarm goes off, it startles her so much she drops her phone on her face. Her nose makes a move that loses her the game she’s playing.

“Okay, ow, fuck—“

She digs it out from where it’s landed under the coffee table. She dials and presses it to her ear.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Gwen’s date check-in service. Now’s your chance to fake an emergency.”

A stuttered breath comes from the other end of the line. “Oh my God, _really?”_

Gwen grabs a potato chip from the bag on the table and chomps down.

“That’s awful, is she okay?”

She’s pretty sure MJ can hear her chewing. She keeps eating anyway.

“O-okay, I’ll… I’ll be right there. Which hospital is it?”

“You’re scary good at this. I’m going to have to re-evaluate every time you’ve cancelled on me.”

“Yes. Yes, okay. I’m on my way right now.”

It takes her fifteen minutes to show up at Gwen’s front door. She kicks her shoes off and lets her hair down, and throws herself face-first onto the couch.

“That bad, huh? Chip?”

MJ picks her head up. To eat the chip from Gwen’s hand. “The first thing he said when we left the movie was _the villain has a point.”_ Her eyes look like they’re about to pop out of her head. “The villain was committing genocide! Like, full on— He didn’t— He had the opposite of a point. He had a fucking… _circle.”_

“What excuse did you go with?”

“My roommate went into anaphylactic shock. She ate a peanut and…” She wraps her hands around her throat and mimics choking.”

“Your poor roommate. How’s she doing?”

“Stable, thankfully. She had her Epi-pen. Chip, please.”

Gwen feeds her another one then perches on the arm of the couch. “And what did we learn?”

“Don’t date film students.” MJ rolls onto her back. “You know, I haven’t been on a first date in over a _year.”_

“You just need more practice.”

She gives Gwen a _Look_ that Gwen doesn’t quite understand and shakes her head. “No, I don’t. Trust me on that.”

(Gwen looks at her, hair splayed out around her head like a fiery halo. Chest rising with breath. Makeup smeared from the couch. She could touch, lean forward and press a hand to her cheek, or her shoulder, or her stomach. They could breathe together, for just a moment. She keeps her hands to herself.)

“I actually, uh. Had lunch with Harry the other day.”

Gwen raises an eyebrow to make up for the way her stomach knots. “As a date?”

“No, no as friends. I just… the tiptoeing. It’s stupid, we’re adults.”

“And?”

“We’re fine, I think? I mean, it seemed like it. We hugged and everything.” She runs a hand over her face. “It’s hard to tell with him sometimes. He was raised to be so… _diplomatic.”_

Gwen knows what she means: Sometimes Harry seems like he was raised by politicians. Ironed shirts, firm handshakes, polite smiles. He’s usually straight-postured with slicked hair. The future face of industry. 

“Can we order burgers? I ran out of there before we could even get dinner.”

—

The library is nearly empty. It smells like coffee and lingering perfume and just the slightest bit like cream cheese from the bagels they’d finished hours ago.

The textbook is swimming. Gwen blinks and tries to focus— fails, and blinks again.

“What time is it?” She asks, poking MJ’s ankle with her foot.

MJ startles. Her head shoots up. For a moment, she seems disoriented, and then her eyes focus on Gwen and she settles, shoulders relaxing and face melting into something painfully fond.

“Hmm?” She asks, pulling an earbud out. “Sorry, what?”

“What time is it?” Gwen repeats.

“Uh…” MJ glances back down at her laptop. “Two-thirteen.”

Gwen pulls a face, groans and leans back in her chair.

They’re going on hour eight, and Gwen is fairly sure she’ll be cross-eyed by sunrise.

“How’s the paper coming?” She asks, because she’ll do anything to avoid going back to memorizing the definition of words like ‘Angstrom’ and ‘Kinematics.’

“Slowly.” MJ takes in Gwen’s slump with a sympathetic smile. “Wanna come help me find a book?”

“God, yes please.”

The English section of the library is better lit than the science section. Instead of being shoved in the back corner of the basement, it’s located across from a seating section bookended with floor-to-ceiling windows.

Other people exist out here. Or, at least, evidence of other people exists out here. Gwen clocks their open notebooks and abandoned backpacks strewn about the expanse of tables and chairs.

It looks more comfortable up here. There are actual armchairs rather than just swiveling desk chairs.

She follows MJ down the narrow aisles between bookshelves. She has the title she’s looking for written on the post-it, and she keeps looking down at it and then up at the shelves, lips pursed into a frown.

Someone is talking a few rows down, Gwen can just barely pick out the words _Lovecraftian_ and _articulate._ It reminds her of ASMR, a gentle flow of comfort down her spine.

She likes it up here, she decides, where the bookshelves aren’t on tracks. She’d get lost on her own, but trailing behind MJ feels like second nature. Gwen knows that if she gets lost, she can turn around and find her. Life feels more permanent between Bradbury and Twain.

If science wasn’t her one true love, maybe she could make a home in this little corner of the world.

She can settle for watching MJ build a nest instead.

“It’s definitely here somewhere,” MJ says, more to herself than anything. She’s caressing the books in a row, mouthing the titles as she touches them. It’s a deep-set determination that plagues her face.

If Gwen were Peter, she’d take a picture.

She thinks it would come out blurry and saturated, so she leans her back against the shelf instead and just watches.

Slowly, MJ makes her way closer rejected titled by rejected title.

Gwen sees the change when she sees what she’s looking for. Eyes ablaze, face bright.

“Oh,” MJ whispers. “Found it.”

She doesn’t warn Gwen before stretching to reach right above her. Her hip presses against Gwen’s, bone against bone.

Gwen doesn’t move— _can’t_ move, because she can feel MJ’s breath against her ear and she’s humming softly to herself, and no one can see them.

There are people a few aisles over who are failing to whisper. One of them laughs, loud, a bark in the night, and MJ pulls away. She’s staring at the spine, oblivious to the way Gwen isn’t breathing.

Gwen’s face is hot. She curls her fingers along the cliffside of shelves. Swallows.

MJ tuts. Groans. “Gross. There’s a foreword by Orwell,” She complains and Gwen just nods like a baby who can’t hold its neck up yet.

“Gross,” she seconds instinctively. She forces herself away from the shelf. “Fuck Orwell, all my homies hate Orwell.”

MJ’s eyes flick up to her face. Her smile makes Gwen consider self-defenestration. “He’s the guy who wrote Animal Farm,” she says, and Gwen puffs.

“Yeah, I knew that.”

Or, she would, if she could think right now.

—

The first headline about the Goblin is written while MJ quizzes Gwen on science terms she can barely pronounce. She reads them with a thick tongue and a crooked smile while some poor, overworked journalist tries to succinctly sum up a story about a masked villain on a flying skateboard.

—

Gwen keeps her headphones tight in her ears to ward off the sounds of the dining hall. Even still, she can hear a group of guys speaking explicitly about their sexual exploits. She doesn’t want to, but she’s taking mental notes.

(Knowledge is power and all that.)

She’s _trying_ to study. She has an exam at the end of the week, but she feels a migraine coming on that’s exacerbated by loud music and the buzzing of her phone.

Text from MJ: **I see you.**

Gwen looks around. She sees groupings of sports teams, a table of girls who look like they haven’t slept in weeks, a handful of TAs poring over their laptops.

And then she spots MJ, surprisingly alone, staring at Gwen from across the room. When Gwen’s phone starts ringing, she answers it without looking.

“Wanna run an errand with me?” MJ stabs her fork into her salad and it comes up shedding cheese.

Gwen takes a long drink of her water to build suspense. MJ raises an eyebrow.

“Ten minutes?”

“See you then.”

—

“Where are we headed?”

“The Bugle.” MJ holds up a manilla envelope. With her sunglasses and blazer, she looks like a sexy undercover agent.

(Her mind wanders to leather, a femme fatale in bright lipstick with shoes that double as knives. Oceans Eight, staring Mary Jane Watson eight times over. Like Lindsay Lohan in the Parent Trap.)

Gwen shakes her head and forces herself back to the present: a New York side street with terrible infrastructure. She’s stepping over litter and potholes and MJ is still waggling the envelope.

“I’m selling Jameson some pictures of Spider-Man.”

“Didn’t realize you’d gotten into the business.” Gwen snatches the envelope and thumbs through the photographs.

“They’re Peter’s. Jameson caps him every month, so…" 

“What a jerk.”

“That’s definitely one word for it.”

The Bugle’s office is impressive. Gwen isn’t sure what she’s expecting, maybe the urgency of a building on fire, but it’s mostly just an office building. Lots of desks, lots of computers, not a whole lot of people running around yelling about _I’ve got the next scoop just you wait!_

Betty’s on the phone when they get there. MJ occupies herself with unwrapping one of the hard candies in a bowl on the desk. She holds one out to Gwen, but she shakes her head.

“Those Peter’s?” Betty asks once she’s hung up the phone. She takes the envelope from MJ’s hand.

“For the sake of argument, they’re from a photographer who’d like to remain anonymous.”

“Already?” Betty glances at her computer monitor. “It’s only the tenth.”

“All this Goblin stuff. Lots of pictures to sell.”

“I’m guessing villains are good for business?” Gwen asks.

Betty snorts. “Yeah, if we can make it look like Spider-Man’s fault. Which, believe me, we can.”

She looks back at MJ. “You sure you don’t want me to give him your name? It’ll be a byline.”

“Not my pictures. The money’s going straight to my client.”

“Well,” Betty says, handing MJ a check, “Tell your client we’re always looking for more pictures.

—

The email comes when they’re in their physics class, one of the rare days where Peter is actually _in_ class. He’s doodling in the margin in Gwen’s notebook, a cat riding a skateboard. It’s wearing a baseball cap and giving her a thumbs up.

Their phones buzz simultaneously.

The only difference in the twin emails is the address line, the rest is an identical invitation.

They discuss it as they walk to lunch, hunched to speak in hushed tones, shoulders bumping.

When they get to the dining hall, Peter slides his phone to Harry and frowns down at him when he asks, “Did you do this?”

“Class was great, dude. Thanks for asking.”

Gwen crosses her arms over her chest. “We’re serious, Har. Did you do that?”

Harry sighs and makes a show out of picking Peter’s phone off the table to look at it. He’s quiet as he reads. He shakes his head and hands the phone back.

“If I was going to offer you a job, I’d just do it,” He says.

“Companies don’t just reach out to students,” Gwen says. “How’d Oscorp get our information?”

Harry shrugs. “Sometimes they contact the school or some staff and ask for recommendations. Someone must have given your names.” Gwen must not look convinced because he adds on, “That’s a good thing— that means someone in the department likes you.”

—

Gwen can hear them before she even sees MJ’s front door. The argument is muffled and distorted by air vents and walls, but she can make out their voices.

“— As if I’m not perfectly capable of—”

“You’re not! I know you’re not, because I had to _bail you out_ —”

“I was perfectly fucking fine, Pete. Or, at least, I _was_ until you decided to come play hero—”

“I’m not _playing_ hero—”

She hesitates with her hand on the door handle. She considers taking the food and turning around. She could take it home, eat dinner alone on her couch and field MJ’s questions later about why she never showed up.

She lets herself into the apartment instead.

MJ and Peter are squaring off in front of the window. MJ’s arms are crossed in front of her chest. Her lips are set in a deep scowl.

Peter hasn’t even bothered taking his suit off, he’s only pulled the mask up over his face.

Gwen has never seen him like this: glowering and flushed, teeth bared.

“And the last thing I need to deal with is you being some kind of tragedy chaser. I mean, do you know how hurt you could have gotten?”

“I’m not being a—”

The door closes. When the full, force of their attention snaps to her, Gwen jumps.

“I brought Chipotle,” She says, holding up the bag.

MJ manages a thin smile in her direction. She turns back to Peter.

“I was covering a story,” she says. It sounds like she’s straining to keep her voice level.

“The school paper isn’t worth getting blown up.”

“Sorry,” Gwen says, finally unable to mind her own business. She looks over MJ, jaw loose. “What happened?”

Peter shifts his weight to his heels. “I had to airlift MJ away from Goblin,” He says with reproach.“Because she thought it would be a good idea to run _into_ the screaming crowd—”

“You did _what?”_

MJ holds a hand up. “I was trying to—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Peter’s volume stuns MJ into silence. He pulls back, as if he’s startled himself. When he speaks again, his tone is controlled, “You could have _died,_ MJ. He’s got bombs, and that fucking glider. I’ve seen him…” He rubs a hand over his face. “Just… Don’t— Don’t do it again. Please. I don’t want to have to bring your body home.”

It’s a compelling argument. Gwen blinks, and she can see the obituary cradled alphabetically in the newspaper.

MJ is stone, though. Diamond, even. Unscratched.

“So let me get this straight,” she says. “It’s fine that I have to watch you crawl in through my bedroom window every week. _I_ have to watch _you_ nearly _bleed out_ on my floor—”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s not? It’s totally fine that I watch _you_ get hurt? But I can’t even—”

“You don’t have a healing factor! You barely know how to throw a punch. It’s my job to protect—”

“—Do my job without you interfering. I’m not made out of glass! I’m a grown ass adult—”

“Without common sense, apparently!”

“Oh, fuck _off,_ Pete!”

The muscles in his jaw twitch. Gwen braces herself for the explosion, but it doesn’t come. She’s watching an implosion, Peter funnels his rage inward. It warps his face, forces upon it a concavity.

“I don’t have time for this,” He says with a bitter calmness, stepping away. “I have to go find Goblin since he got away while I was taking _you_ home.”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to do that,” MJ bites, and Peter narrows his eyes.

“Of course you didn’t. Why would you?” He steps out onto the fire escape, looks past MJ. “I’ll see you later, Gwen.”

A few heartbeats after he disappears into the night, MJ is still glaring at the window.

She comes back to herself with a silent fury. She slams the silverware drawer, throws their forks on the table, opens the cabinet doors so hard the knob leaves a mark on the wall.

“Can you believe him?” She huffs. Condiments in the fridge rattle when she closes the door. She pours them glasses of water and the flowing water trembles with her hands. “I’ve spent six years backing him up and he has the nerve to act like I’m helpless— What?”

“H-huh?”

“What’s that look for?”

Gwen chews the inside of her cheek. 

The truth is that sometimes Gwen thinks of MJ as someone who unintentionally crushes flowers beneath her feet. She’s not always gentle, more prone to the crass bite of honesty than to the soft touch of a botanist.

She’s seen it firsthand, the way MJ nips when threatened. She jumps straight, sometimes, to belt shots. It’s cruelty with a purpose— an engrained defense of her own capabilities. To deny faith in her is to bloom crooked in sidewalk cracks.

She tries her very, very best to avoid it, but it must be written on Gwen’s face all the gruesome ways she imagines MJ mangled in rubble, because MJ barks out an unkind laugh.

“You agree with him.” She sounds betrayed. “I can’t believe it.”

“It’s just that sometimes you… Don’t think before…” Gwen swallows. “Can you blame him for being worried?”

“So what? I should just lie down and let the guys do everything?”

Gwen restrains a scoff. “No, you just shouldn’t be stupid about it.”

MJ’s eyes flash. She opens her mouth, but Gwen continues before she gets a chance to speak, “What were you even going to do? When you got to Goblin, what were you going to do?”

MJ pulls her burrito bowl out of the bag and glares down at the table. Her jaw is squared.

“You gotta know your strengths,” Gwen says, gentle. “Taking on flying villains with just a camera probably isn’t one of them.”

“Right, no. Of course not. Why would it be?”

Gwen groans, rolls her eyes up to the popcorn ceiling. _“MJ.”_

“Why is it so hard to believe that I want to help people, too?” MJ demands. She looks up at Gwen. “Why should that just be reserved for fourteen year old boys who got _lucky—”_

“That’s not what—”

“Or STEM majors who are so _obsessed_ with their own capabilities that they convince themselves a chemistry degree qualifies them to save the world.”

Gwen snorts. She is chilled to the bone, patience worn down to frayed edges already.

“What do you want me to say, MJ? I’m not gonna attack you back.”

MJ’s jaw tightens.

Gwen thinks back to when this argument would have felt righteous, when she was looking for an excuse to despise MJ. Now it burns a cigarette mark into her chest. It’s invigorating, the level of intimacy needed for mindless attacks.

(Knowing what carries weight and what punches are pulled.)

She thinks her feelings should be hurt, and that she should be defending herself.

She just feels alive.

“I can’t just sit around and watch,” MJ says with an air of finality. She stabs her fork into her rice.

“Then don’t.” Gwen sits down. “But don’t act like you have the right to be mad when you get in the way of other people who are just trying to do the right thing.”

And MJ (delightfully cutthroat MJ) takes a bite of her dinner and says, bitter, “So just be a journalist.”

—

The article the Daily Bugle published featured an out-of-focus shot of Peter swinging away with MJ in his arms.

_Spider-Man opts to save single girl instead of the day._

—

Gwen has her boots half zipped when the phone rings. She pats the counter with her hand, one fist still firm around the shoe she’s pulling onto her foot.

“Hullo?”

“Hey! Whatcha doing tonight?”

“I’ve got, uh— fuck, it’s stuck— I’ve got dinner plans.”

_“Dinner plans?”_ MJ sounds scandalized. Gwen rolls her eyes and braces her foot against the cabinet door.

“It’s with the lady who lives down the hall. She— fuck me, am I gonna need to get new boots?”

“Wow, you’ve got a dirty mouth.”

“I didn’t curse before I met you.”

MJ giggles. If Gwen didn’t know any better, she’d think she sounded proud. “She what?”

“Her husband passed away a few years ago. I get her groceries and have dinner with her on Wednesdays.”

There’s an unsettling stretch of silence.

“MJ?”

“Hmm? Yeah, I’m here—” She sounds breathless. “Hey, I actually… I’ve got a cake here I stress-baked last night. How do you think she’d feel about you bringing a plus one?”

—

They get to Stop And Shop and split the grocery list in half. They race to the check-out line and Gwen wins by the smallest of margins.

—

Mrs. Gibbons’s face lights up when she opens the front door.

“Gwendolyn!”

Gwen shifts all the grocery backs onto her left arm so that she can be pulled in for a hug.

“Hey, Mrs. Gibbons. They didn’t have two percent milk, so I got skim. I hope that’s alright.”

“As long as it’s only a pint, dear. I only use it for coffee anymore. Can I help you with the bags?”

Gwen shakes her head and laughs. “Like I say every week, go sit down. Seriously, I wish you’d let _me_ cook for _you.”_

“When I can’t cook anymore, that’s when you need to put me in a nursing home,” Mrs. Gibbons says, eyebrows knit together with sincerity. “I like doing it, and I’m not having this argument again. Especially not in front of a guest.”

MJ starts, like she’d forgotten she was visible.

“Oh, MJ this is Mrs. Gibbons, Mrs. Gibbons, this is my friend MJ.”

Gwen steps into the apartment and drops the bags on the table. She hears the door close.

Mrs. Gibbons says, “You’re the girl who’s in all the plays, right?”

“Oh!” MJ sounds surprised. “I— uh, yes. Yes, I am. I didn’t realize…” She catches Gwen’s eye over Mrs. Gibbons’s shoulder. “I didn’t realize Gwen talked about me.”

“All the time, sweetheart. She mentioned just the other day that—”

“What I’d like to know, Mrs. Gibbons,” Gwen interjects, turning to throw the produce into the fridge so MJ can’t see the way her face is heating up, “is why I’m not considered a guest.”

“Because you’re here all the damn time.”

MJ cackles.

“MJ, can I get you something to drink?”

“I _said_ sit down!”

“See how she treats me?” Mrs. Gibbons asks MJ, her voice thick with mischief. “No respect for the elderly.”

“Tell me about it.”

Gwen rolls her eyes.

They get along like old friends. While Gwen puts away the groceries, she listens to Mrs. Gibbons tell the story behind the pictures hanging on the wall. Christmas of ‘86, her daughter’s first birthday, Her thirtieth wedding anniversary.

“I got married two weeks after my high school graduation,” She explains, her fingers hovering over the picture. Her wedding photo is the biggest on the wall, housed in an ornate gallery frame above the couch.

“Wow… That sounds…”

“Unheard of now,” Mrs. Gibbons assured. “But Harold and I didn’t want to wait any longer than we had to. We figured we should get our life started when we were young and ready.”

“How did you know?” MJ turns her head to look at Mrs. Gibbons. Gwen washes off the potatoes. “That marrying him was the right thing to do, I mean.”

“When we would go for walks, he would walk between me and the street.”

MJ stares at her, head leaned forward, nodding.

It takes her seconds of silence to realize Mrs. Gibbons is done talking.

“That’s it?”

Mrs. Gibbons chuckles. “No. Not at all. It’s what I appreciated the most, though. It meant he paid attention to the little things.”

“I take it he always remembered birthdays.”

Mrs. Gibbons laughs. “Oh, never. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays— he never remembered any of them. But he _always_ walked between me and the street. Get it?”

MJ nods. There’s something soft in the way she’s looking at Mrs. Gibbons. Something serious, too. “Yeah, I get it.”

They eat dinner and sit around talking until well after the roast has gone cold on the hotplate.

Mrs. Gibbons sends them each home with enough leftovers to feed a small army.

“Thank you so much for having me, I know I was a last minute add-on.”

“Please,” Mrs. Gibbons says, “I love the company. You’re always welcome.”

When she pulls her in for a hug, MJ looks ecstatic.

The door closes behind them and MJ is looking at Gwen with an unreadable expression (and Gwen tries, desperately, to decipher the creases of her face).

“What?”

“Huh? Nothing, I just think you—” She clears her throat. “She reminds me of Peter’s Aunt May, all the way up to the part where she tried to set me up with her son.”

Gwen barks a laugh. “Yeah, she’ll do that. She invited him over once when she happened to ‘forget’ I was coming over. She’s trying to be a modern cupid.”

“He as great as she makes him out to be? Because if marrying him means eating food that delicious all the time…”

“Mostly he seemed apologetic. I got the impression it wasn’t the first time she’d done that.”

“Yikes,” MJ says in the same voice one would say _amen._ “May once invited me over for dinner during a power outage and suddenly remembered she had to go to work.”

“Holy shit.”

“There were candles on the table and everything.” She demonstrates with a wide sweep of her arms. There’s a chunk of hair brushing her neck that fell out of her ponytail.

Gwen stops with a hand on her doorknob, the key unturned in the keyhole.

“What _is_ up with you and Peter?” Gwen asks before she loses her nerve. MJ’s jaw goes slack. “I just mean, y’know, you’re really close, and I know you’ve known each other for a long time—”

“We’re just friends. If you wanted to—”

“I don’t,” Gwen says, too quickly. “He’s… I had an opportunity, but it didn’t feel right, y’know?”

MJ hums.

“He’s not my type either,” She says almost absently. “Too…” She frames a picture with her fingers, pulls a twisted face.

“Too Peter?” Gwen suggests, and MJ’s resolve cracks into a million pieces. She snorts.

“Sure, we’ll go with that. _Too Peter._ We tried dating in high school to appease the masses, but it just didn’t work.”

Gwen leans back against the kitchen counter and crosses her arms. “So then what is your type?”

MJ’s head tilts. Her expression softens and hardens at the same time, lips pressing together and eyes glinting.

_Like oobleck,_ Gwen thinks out of nowhere.

“I’ll let you know eventually,” MJ says. She grabs her jacket from the back of the couch. “I should probably head out, though. It’s getting late.”

“Thanks for coming.” Gwen follows her to the front door. “It meant a lot to her, I’m sure.”

“It was really, really fun. I didn’t know that you…” MJ shakes her head. “I’ll have to come by again.”

—

She starts joining Gwen every Wednesday.

—

A week into summer break, Gwen wakes to whispering.

_“Gwennnnnn. Gwennnn.”_

She opens her eyes and nearly screams.

MJ’s face is so close to hers that it’s blurred. Gwen blinks, leans her head back and pulls her pillow over her eyes to block out the sunlight from the open window. She glances at the clock and groans.

_“Why?”_

“We’re going out.” MJ sits back on her heels. She’s dressed, sunglasses sitting in her hair, jean shorts and a tank top. “I already got your bag together. All you gotta do is get clothes on.”

“You got my bag together? How long have you—”

“Half an hour. There’s a to-go cup of coffee on the counter for you.”

Gwen buries her face into her pillow. “It’s early,” She says needlessly.

“We’ve got a long drive. C’mon—” MJ tugs the comforter off of Gwen’s shoulders. When Gwen still doesn’t move, she whacks her with the spare pillow.

“Give me a few more hours.”

“Or,” MJ starts. Gwen hears rustling. When MJ speaks again, her mouth is against the shell of Gwen’s ear, a stray strand of hair tickling the hinge of her jaw. “I’ll let you pick the music,” She whispers, and when Gwen sits up like a reanimated corpse, she blames it on _really_ wanting to listen to Fleetwood Mac.

“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” she responds as a reflex, and MJ looks delighted.

“Wear shorts,” she says, already halfway out the room.

“I’ll have to shave my legs for that,” Gwen whines.

MJ crosses her arms over her chest. “Then get to it,” she says. The corners of her lips twitch.

They’re on the road in twenty minutes. Gwen nurses her coffee and traces some of the doodles spread across MJ’s dashboard.

There’s flowers blooming from the air conditioning vent, and bubbles covering the gear shift, and crossed out to-do lists on the door. There’s notes from friends, too, scribbled wherever there’s space. Little _love you, MJ_ s and phone numbers with initials beneath them.

Her car is a yearbook on wheels. A culmination of everyone she’s ever let in her car; an overlap of people who write _your vibrato is so impressive_ and people who write a paragraph complimenting her paper on the benefits of media piracy.

“Where are we going?” Gwen asks as she runs her hand over a faded note in MJ’s handwriting. _Dinner with May, 3/20/18, 5 pm._

MJ stops humming along to Say You Love Me to say, “You’ll see.”

—

They didn’t manage to beat traffic. They spend a spell of a standstill attempting to popcorn sing all of Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me.’

They fail spectacularly and fall into a comfortable silence, instead, their joint playlist carrying them onto highway exits.

“Harry’s dad offered me an internship,” Gwen says suddenly. “Not this summer, but when school starts back up.

MJ’s face lights up. She seems to forget she’s driving, whipping around to look at Gwen.

The car swerves, someone slams on the horn. MJ jerks back to attention. She raises her hand in an apologetic wave behind her.

“It’s not that— He offered Peter one, too. I think he’s trying to be nice.”

MJ makes a sound deep in her throat. Disgust, maybe. Gwen sees her roll her eyes.

“Or _maybe_ it’s because you’ve got the best grades in your department.”

“We don’t have—”

“So who does? Flash Thompson?”

Gwen can’t see it, but she knows MJ’s eyebrow is raised. She takes a sip of her coffee, being careful to actually keep her eyes on the road.

“Are you gonna take it?”

“I haven’t thought about it,” Gwen lies. She’s thought about it a lot. Her purse is stuffed full of pros and cons lists.

_Pro: a paid internship and (maybe) a job straight out of college._

_Con: she may not have earned it._

“I wanted to know what you think. If it’s, like, cheating.”

“On who? Your social life? All the frat boys you won’t have time to see because you’ll be busy being a big-time scientist?”

Gwen snorts. “I’d be busy getting coffee,” she corrects. “And, like, filling out day planners.”

“Your favorite pastime.”

Gwen rolls her eyes.

“Take it. What’s the worst that could happen?”

—

They pull into a parking spot surrounded by brightly colored houses and yellowing grass.

Gwen had figured out where they were going when they crossed the bridge and the corrosive smell of saltwater snuck in through the air vent.

“We’re about five blocks from the boardwalk,” MJ says as she hoists her tote over her shoulders.

The skies are clear, blue for miles punctuated only by seagulls and banner-carrying airplanes.

“All that fuss for a trip to New Jersey,” Gwen teases. In her left ear, she can hear the ocean. In her right, carnival music.

It smells like salt and funnel cake. They haven’t even stepped on the beach yet, but sand has been kicked up between Gwen’s toes.

She can’t remember the last time she was here.

“It’s more about the surprise than the destination. Maybe if you’re good I’ll buy you one of those novelty shirts.”

Gwen looks over at the selection. There were a surprising amount of copyrighted characters. A lot of Mickey Mouse heads and Minions (and Minion Mickey Mouse heads), a wide selection of American flags, a handful of Avengers.

“Did you poop today?” And it took looking at MJ’s face to realize she was looking at a shirt that said the same thing.

They stop for lunch, and Gwen makes a game of throwing fries up in the air to see if seagulls will catch them.

“You’re going to regret that,” MJ says.

“They’re fed, I’m fed, everyone’s happy.”

She regrets it. Her French fries get abandoned when they start coming down in droves, a swarm of seabirds a thick fog around them.

“I told you!” MJ says. Her hand is on Gwen’s wrist, she’s practically dragging her down the slatted pathway.

It’s a full-speed sprint, flip flops slapping the wood, and other tourists giving them weird looks.

The seagulls are small in their rearview, and Gwen is thinking that just when she feels a pull on her shoulder.

She turns and finds MJ staring intently at one of those carnival ladder games. Gwen backtracks so she’s standing next to her again. Someone shoulders past them.

Gwen waves a hand in front of MJ’s face.

There’s a child teetering on the ladder, swinging uselessly above the inflatable mat below her.

“I bet you I can do that,” MJ says, and there’s a fire in her eyes that makes Gwen’s breath catch.

“Not that I’m doubting you,” Gwen says carefully, “but those things are rigged.”

She’s speaking to MJ’s back, she’s already crossed the boardwalk like a woman possessed.

Gwen has no choice but to follow her.

(She never, ever does.)

“Hold these.” MJ puts her sunglasses on Gwen’s head and shoves her purse against her chest. She’s stepping out of her shoes.

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I think I can do it.” She hands five dollars to the bored-looking teenager guarding the gate.

“What on earth makes you think you can do that?”

“I’m Mary Jane _fucking_ Watson, that’s what.”

She can’t.

Gwen covers her mouth as she watches her flail. Somehow, her hair is jostled out of its ponytail.

By the time she’s finally lost, Gwen’s laughing too hard to even speak. MJ takes one look at her reddened, tear-streaked face and starts laughing, too.

—

MJ is painted with sunset.

They’d made it in the lighthouse just in time to watch sunlight leak into the ocean. The beach below them is a gilded and quiet.

It’s where Gwen should be looking— it’s the sole reason they’d raced across town, to chase the dying daylight— but she’s watching MJ.

Her self control goes down as her exhaustion level goes up, she’s learned this. It’s at night she finds the courage to wrap herself up in MJ’s comforter, or sprawl out with her head in MJ’s lap. Or, this: the dauntlessness of observation.

She thinks, sometimes, that she should just say something. Lift the curtain, wizard or not. She doubts MJ would care. She’d turn her down kindly and their friendship would fizzle out for a few weeks while Gwen digested the rejection and then they’d piece back together the parts of their duo that they could.

She can’t bring herself to.

She only hopes that one day she’ll wake up and MJ won’t utterly enchant her.

MJ turns her head to say something, and Gwen is so wrapped up in thought that she doesn’t even pretend she wasn’t looking.

They’re so close, noses just an inch from brushing. MJ takes in a sharp breath. For the briefest, most exhilarating moment, neither of them pull away. Then Gwen gets ahold of herself and looks back at the ocean.

“Do you ever think about—” MJ starts, soft, but she cuts herself off.

“What?” Gwen glances at her, from the corner of her eye.

(MJ is brighter than the light behind them).

“I—” She sucks her cheeks in. “I have a spare key.” She digs through her bag and holds out her entire keychain just to show off two identical Lowes-branded keys. “And you’re over all the time, y’know, so I thought it would just make life easier.”

Gwen stares at the fanned-out keys. “Are you offering me a key to your apartment?”

“You don’t have to say yes,” MJ says. She’s sunburnt, face shaded pink. “But it seems mutually beneficial.”

“Mutually?”

“Yeah, you have free rein of my apartment and I don’t have to get off the couch when you get there.” Gwen raises an eyebrow at her. _“And_ I get to see your pretty face whenever I want.”

She pinches Gwen’s cheek. “So what do you say?”

When Gwen blinks, she imagines a softer proposal. When she opens her eyes, MJ is still waiting on an answer for this one.

“I’d be honored.” She presses a hand to her heart to appeal to MJ’s flair for the dramatic.

—

Gwen watches the footage of the Mayor’s speech from the safety of her couch. She bites at the skin of her thumb and listens to the explosions, watches footage of people’s feet as they run.

A few blocks away, the streets are still jam-packed with ambulances and cop cars. She saw them on her way back from class, red and blue illuminating the carnage the Goblin had left behind.

She listens to the news drone on ( _Worst attack yet_ and _domestic terrorist_ and _Spider-Man was able to diffuse the situation)_ as she gets dinner together.

—

Gwen is nearly to class when she feels the hand on her elbow. She whirls around to find MJ, pale and shaking. Her eyes are red.

“Hey, are you—” She starts, and MJ just shakes her head.

“Harry’s dad just got arrested,” She chokes out. “Th—The Goblin, he’s…”

It takes Gwen a few seconds to understand.

“Shit,” She breathes. “Have you talk—”

“He’s not answering his phone. Peter’s still tied up with the cops and…”

“Okay. Okay, uh… I’ll try to get ahold of him while we— The apartment first, probably. We should… We should check the apartment.”

She lets MJ lead the way.

Gwen keeps her phone against her palm. Dialing, pressing it to her ear, waiting for the voicemail beep, and starting over. The repetition keeps her grounded.

They don’t speak. MJ keeps her jaw squared like she’s warding off fear. Her hands betray her, though; she wrings them along the length of her purse strap.

Gwen doesn’t know much, but she knows enough: a cleaned out medicine cabinet and a brief stint in rehab.

(It wasn’t information MJ offered willingly, but she never denied it, either, even when she buried tabloids behind other magazines as they passed the display in the grocery store. Gwen didn’t look it up for herself. If Harry wanted her to know, he’d tell her.)

A fist on flesh, her knuckles sting with the memory.

It feels like it takes them ages to get to Peter and Harry’s building.

This is how Gwen learns MJ has a key to their apartment. She doesn’t knock, just pushes in with a sense of purpose that’s so MJ it makes Gwen’s nerves pop off like fireworks.

Harry is on the couch, face buried in his hands. He doesn’t look up when they come in, not even when MJ puts a hand on his shoulder.

“We were calling you,” She says. “Are you—”

_“Okay?”_ He bites out, and Gwen cringes.

It doesn’t seem to faze MJ.

“No, I guess not, huh?” She corrects herself.

“You don’t have to be here.” When Harry finally looks up, the first thing Gwen notices how red his face is. The news couldn’t have broken more than an hour ago, but there were already dark circles forming under his eyes.

“Right, no, we’re just gonna leave you all alone.” MJ’s voice comes out with less an edge of humor than she’d intended.

Harry snaps his head around. She puts her hands up.

“We’re not going anywhere,” She clarifies, softer. “I’m gonna make tea. You guys want tea?”

—

Gwen ends up with Harry’s head in her lap.

He’s quieter than she’s ever seen him. Sedated. She supposes she would be, too.

She doesn’t tell him, _I’m sorry._

She doesn’t tell him, _It’s going to be alright._

She doesn’t see the point.

MJ putters around in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets like she’s trying to feign productivity.

Gwen cards her fingers through Harry’s hair, and she can’t help feeling out of place; disconnected from the rest of them, like she shouldn’t even be here.

If their lives are microcosms of the world, Harry has just experienced a cataclysmic pole shift.

MJ disappears into the bathroom, and Gwen resists the urge to pull out her phone and check the news.

She steeps in silence, instead. None of them touch their tea, but Gwen does watch the steam rise and curl. It makes her feel only the slightest bit better.

Hot air still rises, nothing has been irreparably damaged.

—

It’s nearly two hours before Peter gets back, weary. He toes his shoes off in the doorway and doesn’t even attempt a smile when he and Gwen make eye contact.

MJ walks to him.

“Apartment’s clean,” Gwen hears her mutter. Peter is still in the doorway, head bowed so MJ can whisper. “I checked the cabinets, and the bathroom. I figured you can get— that you can check his room. I didn’t want to—”

“I’ll get it,” Peter promises. He looks up and catches Gwen’s eye. “Is he…?”

“He just fell asleep,” Gwen says. “I don’t think he’s— I mean, he seems—”

She glances at where Harry is passed out on the couch.

“He’s sober,” MJ says, and Gwen’s shoulders relax. “If you want us to stay and help keep an eye on him, we can.”

Peter shakes his head. “No, you guys have done enough. I’ve got him from here.”

“You’ll call us if you need anything?” MJ rubs at her eyes. She and Peter have matching Atlas posture.

Peter nods; it isn’t convincing.

“You coming home with me?” MJ asks over her shoulder. Gwen is grabbing her backpack from where she’d dropped it on the coffee table. She shakes her head.

“I’m just gonna go home and crash.”

MJ cups Peter’s cheek with her hand. “Call me,” she orders again, and she leaves them alone.”

“Thanks for coming,” Peter says when Gwen is close enough that he doesn’t have to speak at full volume. His voice is raspy.

Gwen stops halfway out the door. Peter’s forehead creases, and he opens his mouth in a silent question. Where she puts her hand on his bicep is warm and taut, like he’s holding all of the stress in his arms.

“Are _you_ alright?” She asks before she loses her nerve.

The muscles in Peter’s jaw twitch.

His mask falls off in jagged pieces. It pulls away painfully, and Gwen can’t help but wonder just how long he’s been wearing it. 

She sees the change in his eyes first, the calculating way in which he views the world drops away into fear. The hard line of his lips give way to a quivering frown. His forehead wrinkles, his jaw loosens.

He shakes his head.

Gwen pulls him in for a hug.

They linger in the doorway for a while, gently swaying to the hiss of the air conditioner.

“Norman knows,” he mumbles into her temple. “About me.”

“One thing at a time,” Gwen says. “He can’t do anything about it right now.”

“He’ll tell Harry.”

She pulls back, keeps her hands on Peter’s sides.

“Okay,” She says. “We can deal with that. I can grab some clothes and come back and—”

Peter shakes his head. “That’s not your responsibility. I just… I don’t want him to hate me.”

“It’s not like you _killed_ him.” Gwen cringes at her own crassness. “We’ll get through this,” she says, gentler.

—

Getting through it is a quieter affair than Gwen expects.

They take turns hanging out with Harry. It isn’t conscious— Gwen stops by when her classes are over and MJ is just leaving, Peter gets back just as Gwen is heading downstairs to grab dinner from the front door.

“Be honest,” She says one day as she takes Harry’s knight with her bishop. “Do you want to be left alone?”

He moves his rook forward. Hesitates. Eyes Gwen’s queen uneasily. Puts the rook back. Moves a pawn instead.

“Do you want to leave?” He’s building walls.

She move her own pawn forward. Blocks him.

“Did you know the Earth’s poles historically shift?” She says. “With each other, but the axis moves, too.”

Harry takes her pawn with his bishop. “Alright, I’ll bite. Why?”

Gwen grins. She pulls her rook out of the shadows and takes his bishop. “No damn good reason.”

“There’s got to be a reason.” He drums his fingers on the edge of the board. Moves his queen forward a useless square.

“Sure, if you want to get into the science of magnets, there’s got to be a reason. But scientists don’t know what it is.” Her knight L’s its way toward his queen. Lazy. “That doesn’t change the fact that it happens.”

“Educational.” He risks his queen another space.

“It causes tsunamis, and earthquakes.” Another meandering L.

“The poles shifting?” A rook pulls up in weak defense.

“And the axis moving. It’s like pulling the rug out from under the crust.” The queen is taken.

Rook takes knight. Emboldened. “And let me guess, you want to figure out how to fix it.”

“You can’t fix something you can’t understand.” Gwen’s queen comes back into play. Harry is left with a pawn and a king. “The tsunamis are gonna come, and the tectonic plates are gonna shift. They’ll switch back eventually…”

The pawn jumps forward. “Or?”

“Or the earth sorts itself out in another way. Check.”

He moves his king to the right. “And it happens for no damn reason, huh?”

“No, it happens for a reason, if you get into the science of it. Check.”

Another useless bid to the right. “But there’s no point in that.”

“No, there’s not. It’s gotta sort itself out. Checkmate."

She backs the king into a corner. Harry gnaws the skin off his lip while he stares down at the board.

“You punched me,” He says.

Gwen sniffs. “Yeah, I did.”

“I’m sorry I put you in that position.”

“I’m sorry I gave you a black eye.”

He closes his eyes and nods. He rubs at his cheek, as if experiencing phantom pain. Gwen feels it, too, hairline fractures in her knuckles. Guilt that doesn’t go away.

“You want to stay for dinner?” Harry asks, and Gwen nods. She’s suddenly too exhausted to speak.

—

MJ’s apartment is like a second skin. Gwen could probably close her eyes and recreate it perfectly. She knows where the forks are, the cutting boards, the thermometer, which couch cushion the remote always gets stuck under.

She walks there, sometimes, without thinking about it, takes the bus over on autopilot and doesn’t realize until she’s outside MJ’s building.

It’s how she ends up just letting herself in before MJ is even home from rehearsal. She’s curled up on the kitchen chair eating a ham and cheese sandwich when she hears the keys in the lock.

“‘shup?” She greets from around her mouthful of food. “Why are you covered in paint?”

“We were making sets. Why are you in my kitchen?”

“Forgot to get groceries. Want a sandwich?” She holds out the uneaten half. MJ shakes her head.

“I’ll make my own, thanks.”

“How was set painting?”

“Way out of my wheelhouse. Did you finish the cheese?”

“I left you a few slices.”

“In my own house? How gracious.”

“Wanna watch a movie or something?” Gwen watches MJ get her sandwich together.

She takes a bite and shrugs. “Sure, why not? I need to shower first, though.”

—

When MJ answers the door, Harry looks like his nerves are being drawn and quartered. Under the orange hallway light, he’s unfathomably peakish. He wrings his hands in front of them and stammers out something resembling a hello, and Gwen watches MJ’s shoulder muscles tense under her tank top.

“Can I— do you mind if I stay here for a little while?” He asks, and there’s a quaver to his voice. He speaks, though, with a clarity that seems to make MJ relax. “It’s, uh. It’s a bad night and I don’t really want to be...”

MJ steps out of the doorway.

“Apartment’s all yours,” She says.

“I— sorry, am I interrupting, or—?”

Gwen shakes her head. “We’re just watching a movie,” she assures. “There’s more than enough popcorn to go around.”

MJ flops back down on the couch and holds the bowl out to him. He shakes his head. He’s squinting at the screen from where he’s lingering by the front door. Hands in pockets, mouth pulled tight. His dress shirt is contrasted by dark bags under his eyes and finger-teased hair.

“What are you watching?”

“Newsies.” Gwen scooches over, closer to MJ, and pats the cushion she’d just been sitting on.

Harry looks at her, then at the empty space.

“The, uh…” He sits like he’s expecting there to be spikes shrouded by the pleather. “The one with Christian Bale.”

MJ groans and buries her head in a throw pillow. “You _people,”_ She cries out.

“I take that as a no?”

“The Broadway recording,” Gwen says. “She’s just being dramatic because I _wanted_ to watch the other—”

“Katherine’s not even in it! There’s not a _single_ woman—”

“Medda’s there!”

“Played by a _white woman._ I mean, the character was inspired by Aida Overton Walker! And they cast Ann-Margret?”

“Point taken,” Harry says, just the slightest bit less stilted. “Broadway recording it is.”

“The other one’s nostalgic,” Gwen presses, just to see MJ’s forehead twitch. “I didn’t watch the broadway version in middle school music class.”

“I will forcibly remove you from my apartment. I will take back the spare key and _change the locks_ just to be safe, don’t test me.”

“Just turn on the damn movie.”

Satisfied that she won, MJ does.

Thirty minutes and half a bowl of popcorn later, Harry has chilled out enough to actually lean back in his seat. MJ has her legs pulled under her, and she’s humming along under her breath. Harmonizing.

“Jesus,” Harry breathes. “How are they _doing_ that?”

“With a lot of leg strength,” Gwen says. “And also core— I imagine not sliding on paper involves a lot of balance.”

“It’s not so bad.” MJ looks at Harry thoughtfully. “I bet you could do some of those moves?”

Harry snorts. “Yeah, sure, if you replace some of my muscles with _elastic.”_

“Not the acrobatics, obviously, but the tapping…” She stands and holds a hand out to him. “Here, come try.”

He stares at her incredulously. “Absolutely not.”

“No, come on, I believe in you.” She picks his wrist up from his lap, tugs. “It’s not that hard.”

“Who do you think I am? Jeremy Jor— Ough!” He staggers off the couch when Gwen pushes him forward. He catches himself on the coffee table.

“Up you go,” Gwen says. She flops into his spot and stretches her legs out.

“Excellent. Let’s go over here, there’s more room.”

“MJ I’m not going to—”

“No, you definitely are. We’re doing this.”

“I’m gonna look stupid.”

“So? Who’s here, man?” MJ made a wide, sweeping motion with her arm. “Look, this is called a shuffle.”

Gwen watches MJ lead Harry in the steps and she thinks that MJ tries to atone for her sins. She picks up the flowers she steps on and presses them into journal pages, restores their beauty as an apology for creased petals and accordion stems.

“Toe first,” MJ says, she holds onto Harry’s bicep and re-positions him. “Then heel— How did you even manage to fuck up that bad?”

“If I _knew,”_ Harry points out indignantly. He moves his arms up to cross them over his chest, and MJ pushes them back down. She’s giggling.

“No, look, just…” She repeats the movement, slower.

“Your downstairs neighbors hate you,” Gwen says. She grabs another handful of popcorn and leans back.

MJ waves a dismissive hand at her.

Harry fumbles a few more times. Gwen has another handful of popcorn.

He’s frowning down at his feet, muttering his breath _toe, heel. Toe, heel. Toe, heel._

“Just memorize the arm movements!” Gwen calls from the couch, “Move your arms and pretend you know what you’re doing with your feet.”

“You know? I’d _love_ to see you try,” Harry says. “Since you’re so confident.”

“I’m just enjoying the free show.”

“Pussy,” He mocks, and he sputters when MJ smacks him upside the head.

“He’s right,” Gwen admits solemnly. “And you know what? I’m proud of it.”

“It’s fine, we’ll make her sky dance later.”

Harry laughs, _actually_ laughs, and the world feels righted. Like they’ve restored themselves to a 23.5 degree tilt with just a little bit of dance and laughter.

It’s corny. She knows things are never that simple, but she lets herself pretend that this one night can change the world.

(It can change theirs, at least. She’s sure of that. She watches Harry scoop MJ up and she knows there’s been some kind of seismic shift.)

When she’s pulled off the couch, she goes willingly, mimics step after step, heel and toe. MJ wraps her arms around both their shoulders and they walk Harry through a kick line.

Gwen thinks, _This is what love is._

—

“I got you a coffee,” Gwen says. She slides it across the table to MJ, drops her bag onto the floor, and throws herself into the seat opposite her. “That line was _insane._ Like, out the door.” They take a sip at the same time. “I have no idea what kind of _loser_ would wait in line fifteen minutes for coffee— What?”

MJ is looking at her intensely. “You know how I take my coffee.”

“Uh. Yeah? I just— I’ve seen you make it, and I’ve heard you order it, so I’ve—“

“I think I’m in love with you,” MJ blurts out.

Gwen blinks, then barks out a laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure you—“ She starts, choked, but her eyes lock onto the cup in MJ’s trembling hand. Her eyes are wide, almost crazed. Gwen swallows. “You’re being serious?”

MJ nods rapidly. She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry I just— The coffee. It’s… It’s like Mrs. Gibbons said, and I don’t want to keep pretending—“

“You’re in love with me?” Gwen asks again, mostly because listening to MJ ramble was making her anxious-lightheaded.

She opens her eyes again. Her stare is piercing, and Gwen can’t decide whether she wants to run away or if she’s being drawn in.

“Yeah,” MJ breathes. “I don’t want to make things weird, and I’ll never mention it again, but I couldn’t _not_ say it anymore.”

Under the table, Gwen pinches her leg. She feels her nails biting into the skin of her thigh and her brain explodes into fireworks.

“I—“

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

“I do. Want to, I mean, I’m just…”

Gwen thinks, _I have spent every day watching you like you’re something holy. You’re the Madonna, the halo, the stained glass in the back of my mind. I would rip out every inch of furniture to make room for you. I’d tear the building down to its skeleton just to rebuild it with you by my side. I have dreamed about this every day and pondered it every night and now there’s no words I could say that would mean all of that._

“Of course I know your coffee order,” she says instead, incredulous, “and which bra is your favorite, and that you only drink out of the mug in the cabinet that’s chipped because it reminds you of Chip from Beauty and the Beast, and that you broke your arm in third grade because you let Flash talk you into jumping off the bleachers. You hate hurting people, but you do it anyway if it feels necessary. You don’t lie.”

MJ’s lips have been worked into a nervous line. Gwen looks in her eyes and she can see every through she’s ever had, she can see the universe in the light spots.

“I mean, Jesus, MJ— you couldn’t tell?”

MJ swallows and the sound races down Gwen’s spine. “I thought— after we read lines, maybe. I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”

_Presumptuous,_ Gwen wants to laugh at that. Instead she balances her forehead on her thumb and groans.

“You never said anything either!”

“You’re an actress, MJ, sorry if I didn’t notice you hiding your _crush—“_

She yelps a curt laugh. “I wasn’t hiding shit!” Gwen rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t! No one who’s trying to hide a crush gives someone the spare key to their apartment at the top of a _lighthouse.”_

“You’re like that with everyone.”

MJ shakes her head and rests her fingers on the bone of Gwen’s wrist. “No, I’m not,” she says, and then they’re kissing, fingers tangled in hair and hands grasping at shirts, and this has got to be what Heaven is like: Mary Jane Watson’s thighs draped over her own and lips on her neck, and _this this this._ This is what she’s been waiting for.

Gwen isn’t even sure when they moved to the couch.

MJ kisses differently than any frat boy. She’s more urgent, like she’s been been starving herself for a year and she’s _hungry_ and Gwen can’t help breaking out into laughter. She giggles against MJ’s lips until MJ pulls away to look at her both quizzically and also like _hey don’t ruin this for me._

“I’m sorry!” Gwen gasps. “It’s just— The library, and my bed, and I—“ She breaks off into another breathless fit of laughter and buries her face in MJ’s shoulder. “You’re such a fucking _tease.”_

MJ’s breath hitches. _“I’m_ a tease?” She demands, offended. She pulls Gwen away so that she can properly glare at her. “You’re the one who walks around like _that_ all the time!”

“I don’t walk around like _anything_ —“

MJ’s mouth drops open. If she’d looked offended before, she looks furious now. Comically so. “Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy,” She says, and Gwen shakes her head.

“Don’t full name me.”

“Have you _seen_ your ass?”

“Oh my God.”

“It could be. It’s at _least_ sonnet worthy.”

“If you write a sonnet about my ass you will _never_ see it.”

That must have been a dire enough threat, because MJ stopped talking and pressed her lips to Gwen’s cheek, on the bone of her brow, on the tip of her nose.

“And the rocky road.”

Gwen crinkles her nose. “Fuck, that shit’s disgusting.”

“You bought it.”

“Yeah, for you. It’s all for you.”

—

Gwen wakes up with hair in her face and morning breath.

MJ is still asleep beside her, face buried in her arms and hair fanned out on Gwen’s pillow. The air conditioner sings. The neighbors upstairs dance. It is too silent and too still inside the margins of MJ’s apartment.

Gwen needs to run. She throws her clothes on and leaves a note on the table and she ventures out, out, out into the world. She kicks her legs in the empty elevator, and breathes a scream into her cupped palms, and rubs her hands together until they feel impossibly hot.

The City doesn’t care about her, but Gwen cares for it. She skims her fingers over leaves as she walks. Some of them give way, let go of final bits of their strength and serpentine to the ground. Autumn’s twilight creeps up on New York in increments: there are Christmas lights strung up on patchy trees. The air outside coffee shops is peppermint tinted.

Gwen is alive with the feeling of _MJ_ lingering on her skin. Cold air touches her everywhere MJ had, it chaps at her lips, nips at her ear, pulls at her hair. She’s alive, alive, alive, and the City buzzes with it.

—

For their first date, she pulls out the dress she bought. The colors are less atrocious than she remembers.

It fits better now, flares out around her hips and pulls tight around her boobs, and when she looks in the mirror she recognizes herself.

They get lunch and sit with their hands interlocked overtop the table. Their feet knock into each other.

They stand up to leave and MJ tells her, “I like your dress.” And Gwen sticks her hands into the fabric on her hips and proudly tells her,

“It has _pockets.”_

And she is alive, alive, alive.

—

“So you guys are…” Peter points between them. He opens his mouth, then closes it, points again. “That’s awesome— Great! Congrats!”

He’s grinning. He looks back at MJ. “So you’re… Uh…”

“I listen to Mitski,” MJ says, and Peter nods, understanding.

“Awesome. Cool. Are we still getting lunch?”

—

“This _sucks,”_ MJ decides. Loose strands of hair are stuck to her forehead with sweat. She holds the soccer ball to her side like she’s trying to squeeze the life out of it. It’s not a terrible plan, if it goes flat they can’t spend any more of their afternoon kicking it around.

“Only because you’re a sore loser.” Harry gulps down a mouthful of water. There’s a huge sweat stain around his collar. He’s grinning, though. Elated. Gwen doesn’t think she’s seen him look so _alive_ in a long time.

“Piss off, Osborn,” Gwen says. She has her hands pressed to the back of her head. “You probably played some… fancy rich boy sport.”

(They _were_ sore losers, that’s not the point.)

“Lacrosse isn’t—”

Gwen raises her voice to cut him off, “Probably _paid off_ the ref.”

“It totally is, by the way,” Peter says. He’s laying down on the bleachers, knee pointing to the sky. “A fancy rich boy sport.”

“We never paid off the ref.” Harry crosses his arms over his chest and pouts. “We sucked with honor.”

“If you sucked, I don’t know how to describe how bad we are,” MJ says.

Their playing looks how caterwauling sounds. They were sloths-playing-foosball bad.

(Gwen had never been good at soccer in elementary school, either.)

“You were solidly in ‘hot mess’ territory,” Peter assures

“It wasn’t a fair fight. I’m too pretty for sports.” MJ makes a show of admiring her nails. Gwen rolls her eyes.

“I need a shower,” she says, and they all take the hint.

—

Her shoulder brushes MJ's as they walk back out toward the street.

“You guys wanna grab something to eat?”

“Oh, uh.” Gwen glances over at MJ. She’s digging through her purse. “We actually—“

“Have you seen my chapstick?”

“Um…” Gwen sticks her hands in her pockets. “Here, just take mine.”

MJ side-eyes her. “Did you take _mine?”_

Gwen says again, “You can have mine.” She’s still holding her Duane Reade brand lip balm out.

In front of them, Peter and Harry have stopped to watch them.

MJ scoffs. “You totally took mine.”

Gwen tries to play innocent, but the cylinder in her pockets is a beating heart under the floorboards. “I like the strawberry,” She says, and when MJ puffs her cheeks out, she starts running.

MJ shoves the soccer ball into Peter’s chest and gives chase. She grabs Gwen by the back of the collar, tackles her to the ground with her arms around her waist.

She plants herself on Gwen’s thighs, weighs her down. “You’re a thief,” She says, shoving her hands into Gwen’s pockets.

(Gwen tries to push her off to no avail.)

“Aha!” MJ holds the chapstick to Gwen’s face, and swats her arms away when she tries to make a grab for it.

“I can explain!” Gwen defends, but she breaks off into a fit of giggles when MJ tries (fails) to apply it to her lips. She streaks it across Gwen’s cheek and her mouth falls open. She breathes a laugh.

“Wait, shit, I didn’t mean to—“ She cuts herself off with a snort. “This is why we don’t _steal_ things!” She wipes the excess off with her palm. “Gross, you’re really sweaty.”

“Uh. Is that a yes for lunch, or?”

Gwen leans her head back to look at Harry. He’s upside down, rubbing the back of his neck.

“We have movie tickets,” MJ says. “So raincheck?”

—

Gwen pulls her jacket tighter around herself and leans over the railing. This high up, the surrounding blocks look like a roadmap. She traces the lines with her finger and mouths the names of the roads.

Something moves in the corner of her eye, a flash of red. She grins.

“I figured we could pour one out for our internship,” Peter says when he lands on the roof. He holds up a six-pack of shitty beer.

“You allowed to drink and swing?” Gwen takes one, anyway.

“I’m off-duty,” he assures. “If the city’s not safe by now, someone else can take care of it.”

He swings his legs over the side of the roof. Gwen’s a coward, she stays seated behind the ledge, on the flat concrete she couldn’t topple 200 feet off of.

The bottle is a twist-off, she pockets the cap.

“You fill out any other applications yet?”

“Haven’t had the time.” Peter stretches his arms over his head. When he pulls his mask up over his face, Gwen can make out dark circles under his eyes. “You know how finals week goes.”

Gwen hums. 

The corner of Peter’s lips twitch. “Can I ask you something weird?”

“Shoot.” Gwen takes another sip of her beer.

“Did I ever have a chance?” He’s looking at her with an eyebrow raised, lips turned down in the slightest frown. There’s a faint scratch just below his ear.

She pictures him under a streetlight, shadows cast down his face, a hand on her back.

(She imagines something else, too, muffled, like it’s coming from a box locked in her brain. She feels like she’s falling.)

“Maybe in another life,” She muses.

He nods, stiff. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

When he pulls his drink away, he’s smiling.

“But I’m sure in _this_ life…” She nudges him with her shoulder. “Had any luck?”

“There’s fish out there,” Peter says. “I just don’t have much time to go fishing.”

“You know, a little birdie told me that Johnny Storm—”

“Finish that sentence and you’re dead to me. MJ _needs_ to let that go.”

“We just want what’s best for you, Pete. Open your heart to love.”

He stands, and Gwen cackles into her elbow. “I’m walking away,” He tells her. “I’m going to any other rooftop. _”_

She reaches up and takes his wrist, pulls him back down to sit beside her. They lean against each other, shoulder-to-shoulder.

“You know, Betty and I had a bet.”

“Shut up! No you didn’t!”

“We did! She thought it was going to take, like, half the time it did.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I thought it would take _waaaay_ longer.” He takes a drink. “I’ve seen her crush on people— She once told Harry she’s ‘no man’s girl’ and ‘certainly not his’ and that was _while they were dating.”_

Gwen scrunches her face up. “Ouch.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, though.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because she said to me, and I quote—“ He pitches his voice up in an utterly average MJ impression, _“Face it, Tiger, I just hit the jackpot.”_ He chuckles, like it’s some kind of inside joke. Gwen doesn’t feel the need to dig for context, just sighs and says,

“Mmm, what can I say? I’m like a slot machine. Pull that level _just_ the right way—“

“Is this a sex joke? I’m _begging_ you not to finish.”

“And that’s why _you_ have yet to hit the jackpot.”

He chokes on his beer. _“Gross,_ Gwen.”

Her laugh takes a while to fizzle out. She picks at a loose thread at her jacket.

“We haven’t told Harry yet.”

Peter lets out a long breath. “He’s doing better,” He says. “You know that.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t. I’m just worried…”

She feels him nod. “As long as you want to keep it a secret, I’ll keep my mouth shut, but it’ll probably hurt his feelings more if you don’t tell him.”

“Did you?”

“Tell him?”

“Yeah.”

Peter clicks his tongue. “Norman got to him first. I was trying to let the storm settle a little bit, but…”

“It doesn’t seem like he hates you.”

“Well, I didn’t kill him.” His jaw is squared. Gwen brings a hand up and soothes it.

“You did the right thing,” She reminds him. “He _doesn’t_ hate you. The world isn’t ending.”

“Things can never be easy, huh?”

“If they were, they’d never be worth it.”

Peter raised his Beer up. “Hear, hear.”

—

“I’m gonna beat you one of these days.” Harry is half-laying on the table, his arms draped around the chess board, fingers gripping the ledge.

He glares at his king, willing it to move out of check, but it doesn’t budge.

“I’m unbeatable,” Gwen says. “I’ll rule this kingdom forever. Wanna go again?”

“You know, I’m just not in the mood to keep losing.”

“And _that…”_ She sweeps the pieces back into the box. “Is your loss.” She glances at the time on her phone. “I should head out, anyway. I’ve got dinner plans.”

He raises an eyebrow. She presses her lips together.

“Can I help you?”

“Dinner plans?” The corner of his lips pull up.

“It’s where you eat a meal at night.”

Harry rolls his eyes. He leans back in his seat, watches Gwen, unamused. “Are you ever going to tell me or am I going to have to keep playing dumb forever?”

“Tell you what dinner is?”

“Tell me you and MJ are dating.”

Gwen freezes holding the lid of the box just above it.

“I’m not an idiot, you know.”

Slowly, she lowers the lid. “I never thought you were. I just… Wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”

“Perfectly well, thank you very much.” He sighs, drags his palm across his brow. “I get it. I wouldn’t tell me right away, either.”

“I’m glad you do, though. I hated not telling you.” He looks at her through his lashes, doubtful, and it’s her turn to roll her eyes.

“I didn’t like not having you be a part of my life, dumbass.”

He laughs, averts his gaze to the chess board for a beat, two, before saying, “God, you’re starting to sound like her.”

Gwen pats the chess box. “Keep trying,” she tells him, standing. “You’ll only get better.”

—

Eventually, Gwen decides that MJ plants trees. She can picture her hands muddied, pinching seeds between her thumb and forefinger, and placing them into the soil with gentle precision. She can see her soothing the disturbed ground, marking its position with a stone, and coming back to water it.

It’s a process that requires patience, but it will grow into something she can’t trod on. It will outlive her. It will hold carved initials and secrets. It will grow fruit that will prove Newton right. She will tend it, she will press leaves into the pages of books, and she will never have to watch it go rings-up.

She gets her first paper published in the Bugle and it’s like a new planet has been born. Gwen watches her create, and then she watches her reap. She builds an orchard in a scrapbook.

It’s over dinner one night that Gwen thinks about Romeo and Juliet again. Accidental love. Love like a sword twisted in the gut. Love like hatred coiled so tight it turns inside out. A dagger to the gut, a poison. Love like tragedy deferred.

“It was an accident,” She tells MJ.

“And now?”

“A conscious decision.”

MJ presses the insides of their ankles together.

**Author's Note:**

> *cracks knuckles* hoooooo boy am I proud of this one. Kudos and comments are always appreciated! Also, PLEASE come talk to me on Tumblr [ @dredfulhapiness ](dredfulhapiness.tumblr.com) I love these girls and I want to talk about them All The Time. Thanks so much for reading!


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